Fivefold tunnel
Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson
Fivefold tunnel, 2000
Stainless steel
Ca. 222 x 126 x 1055 cm
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Installation view: OLAFUR ELIASSON: BAROQUE BAROQUE, Das Winterpalais des Prinz Eugen, Vienna, Austria, 2015
Photo: Anders Sune Berg
- Date
- 2003
- Medium
- Stainless steel
- Dimension
- Ca. 222 x 126 x 1055 cm
- Credit
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
- This artwork is part of the donation and long-term loan from TBA21 to the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Details
Fivefold tunnel is a freestanding arched passageway that connects two ceremonial rooms of the enfilade, reminiscent of a baroque arcade, or traillage. Composed of intersecting sets of parallel steel bars, the latticework structure, whose pattern is based on Ammann lines, displays fivefold symmetry. Five sets of parallel lines, spaced according to the golden ratio, cross each other at angles of 108 and 72 degrees, generating a complex aperiodic pattern. The use of fivefold symmetry in this work stems from the artist’s close collaboration with Icelandic mathematician and architect Einar Thorsteinn.
