Visiting ARoS part three - Your Rainbow Panorama

As I mentioned the other day, I had to cover Your Rainbow Panorama in a separate post, mainly because it looks so gorgeous that you take a thousand pictures, and then a few just doesn't do it. It is a surprisingly elegant and minimalist structure, and a quite vertiginous experience to walk around in the dizzying, psychedelic color cloud, where the fantastic view of the city gets this eerie and unreal quality, because of the intense color filter you see it through. 

The roof terrace under the panorama walkway is a great place to hang out as well, and the whole thing is basically a do-not-miss must, if you go to Aarhus. I will not attempt to interpret Olafur Eliasson's artistic intention here, but the whole building is said to be a paraphrase of Dante's Divine Comedy, and the panorama is supposed to be the Paradiso. I think?

Here we are, perhaps in Paradise. The weather was great, that's for sure.

Visiting ARoS part two - go see some art!

We mainly went to see Something Strange This Way - Janet Cardiff & Georges Bures Miller, and you can too, but you really have to hurry (it ends on April 19th). For the rest of this year you can see Out of the Darkness, a curated view on some of the works from the ARoS collection, and The 9 Spaces in the basement will be arranged as they are now, until late 2016. Which means that you can see - among many, many other things - the fantastic Shirin Neshat video installation (which you should, even though it is more than an hour long). See a bit about the stunning ARoS building in part one.

Here are some glimpses from four very intense hours the other day:

From top:

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller: The Carnie (2010)
Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller: Opera for a Small Room (2005)
Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller: Storm Room (2009)
Carsten Höll: Sphäre Rosa (2001)
Maurizio Nanucci: My Sense of Your Sense of Language (1994)
Tracey Moffatt: Doomed (2007)
Tal R: Rumdi, rumdi, rumdi (1989-2013)
Shirin Neshat: Women Without Men (2004-08)
Olafur Eliasson: Your Atmospheric Colour Atlas (2009)
Olafur Eliasson: Omgivelser (2007)
Mariko Mori: Tom Na H-ui (2006)
Olafur Eliasson: Your Condensation (2013)
Tony Oursler: Unk (2004)

Visiting ARoS part one - the place

The funny thing about living in Copenhagen is that you live quite far away from the rest of Denmark, even though you do live in the capital. Which is one of the main reasons I still hadn't gotten around to visiting the impressive ARoS modern art museum in Aarhus. Somehow, spontaneously, it was decided that my sister and her family were going in Easter, and I managed to squeeze myself into the car, and off we went. It was a great experience, it really exceeded my expectations, and I would warmly recommend a visit, should you be in the neighborhood.

I like how the building (architects: Smith, Hammer & Lassen, 2004) doesn't try to be light or 'easy' to grasp visually, it is massive, solid and perched on a hilltop in the middle of Aarhus, and you see glimpses of it hovering over the city everywhere. On top it is adorned with Olafur Eliassons Your Rainbow Panorama (I will get back to that in a separate post) which is kind of shiny and out of place looking on the dense building. And yet, somehow, it works. It's weird and not very Danish, and I like it.

As you can see, the rainbow is even visible from inside the museum, here it is reflected on a nearby building. It has truly become a landmark, and this view from a bit away is quite stunning:

Once inside the building, it is a totally different experience: it is white, spacious and full of surprising vistas and angles. I could argue that it is perhaps a bit confusing and you tend to forget which floor you are on, but that's to do with the wayfinding design, which could be much better. But see how bright and airy it looks:

That is the famous Boy by Ron Mueck you glimpse at the bottom of the vertigo provoking glass atrium. You see him from many angles and heights, and he is really something to see, I discovered. Read much more about him here. 

My nephew and brother-in-law taking in the Boy. He is HUGE!

We also liked that they have a bring-your-own-picnic-space. I wasn't large, but the big yellow sculpture you can use as a bench / table / play area is cool.