Olafur Eliasson: Reality Machines

Olafur Eliasson: Reality Machines documents a three-decade practice built on the conviction that art can turn thinking into doing, tracing sculpture, photography, film, and installation shaped by a deep interest in perception, movement, and embodied experience.

Published by Koenig Books and Moderna Museet to accompany the exhibition Verklighetsmaskiner / Reality Machines in Stockholm, the book was conceived and designed by Irma Boom as an artist's book in its own right, with essays interacting with tactile papers and transparent films rather than a conventional plate-and-text layout. It includes writing by philosopher Timothy Morton and curator Matilda Olof-Ors, a conversation between Eliasson and Moderna Museet director Daniel Birnbaum, and Anders Sune Berg's installation photography of the exhibition.

Eliasson (b. 1967) works from a large Berlin studio with architects, engineers, and designers, extending his practice beyond the museum into architectural and civic projects worldwide. This volume situates the Stockholm exhibition within that broader trajectory, from early works like Beauty (1993) through the large-scale environmental and perceptual installations for which he later became known.