Yellow to orange and six yellow movie

Delicately unfolding across the sheet, Yellow to orange and six yellow movie belongs to Olafur Eliasson’s ongoing series of watercolors that study depictions of movement and depth in two dimensions. Though working in a static, flat medium, Eliasson’s “movies” graphically demonstrate the progression of form and color in time using transparent ellipses, activating and animating the picture plane as if one was watching a film. The circles and ellipses in the present lot are representative of various stages of motion of a revolving disk, and thus relates closely to Eliasson’s sculptural practice, such as the Weather Project in the Tate’s Turbine Hall in 2003-2004. Another example is his installation Yellow versus Purple from 2003, in the collection of the Tate Modern, a transparent yellow disc hangs from a steel cable linked to a motor, bathed in the light of a floodlight nearby. The suspended disc produces a yellow shadow on the wall behind it that changes shape, from a circle to an ellipse and back again, as the disc rotates. Thus, Yellow versus Purple is a three-dimensional version of the present lot, underscoring the intrinsic connection between Eliasson’s works on paper and his full-scale installations.