Galeria Fortes Vilaça and Galeria Luisa Strina are pleased to present, in partnership, the first solo show by artist Olafur Eliasson in Brazilian galleries. A series of new works and two large installations by the artist will be shown in parallel at the Galpão Fortes Vilaça and at Galeria Luisa Strina.

Eliasson’s work deals with sensory and perceptual questions, seeking to reinforce the idea that we all co-produce the world in which we live. The spectator, therefore, is never passive, but always takes part in the artwork’s process of signification.

At Galpão Fortes Vilaça, the visitor is welcomed by an environment defined by light, darkness and movement, where the artworks point to a world “which is not found, but made.” In Your uncertain shadow, one comes upon a large white wall – as the viewer crosses the space, the walls come to life with a series of shadows in movement. The shadows are superimposed in a scale of tones extending from gray to black, creating a sort of choreography.

Your roundabout movie inspires a greater degree of contemplation. Two rectangular objects – one solid and the other in the shape of a frame – are projected, slowly rotating, on a screen hanging in the center of the room. Their colored shadows – one green, the other pale red – turn until they are synchronized on a perfect continuous plane. The work invites the spectator to walk through the space to observe its mechanisms. Eliasson also presents a large new sculpture, Your aurora borealis particle, at the Galpão’s entrance. The hanging work consists of a series of mirrors and color-effect filter glass, where, once again, our action alters our perception of the world.

At Galeria Luisa Strina, the spectator is invited to engage with experimental objects that are the result of the artist’s engagement with scientific instruments, works that the architecture theorist Sanford Kwinter has called “perceiving machines.” In the artwork that lends the exhibition its title, Your orbit perspective, a slowly rotating semicircle, projected onto a screen, appears to tilt as it rotates. This three-dimensional effect generates a neurological stimulus that provides an altered experience of space.

Throughout the exhibition room, two groups of works, based on the observation of spatial geometry, are hung from the ceiling. Multiverse 1–10 presents works made with copper-coated steel wire, bent into circles and semicircles and held together by small magnets. The resulting shapes recall navigational instruments. In Your viewing orbit 1–3, intersecting semicircular wire segments are affixed to round mirrors, creating the optical illusion of spheres and making the viewer collaborate in constructing an illusionary yet real space. With Tectonic egosphere, the artist presents a sphere covered with black geometric patterns. This sculpture explores the relation of contrast between its exterior shape, a glass globe, and its interior, in which two mirrored polyhedra produce a series of reflections. When looking carefully through the gaps in the surface, the viewer discovers a visual uneasiness in its interior.

Born in Denmark, in 1967, Olafur Eliasson currently lives and works in Berlin and Copenhagen. His solo shows and recent projects notably include Little Sun, a solar-powered lamp launched at Tate Modern, London (2012); Your rainbow panorama, ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark (2011); Your body of work, SESC Pompéia, SESC Belenzinho and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (2011); Innen Stadt Außen, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany (2010); Your chance encounter, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2009–10), and Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, SFMOMA (2007) and MoMA, New York (2008). He is currently participating in the Sharjah Biennial 11.