The Cubic Structural Evolution Project

From Sharne Wolff…

Although the title only gives the secret away with hindsight, this exhibition consists of thousands upon thousands of white Lego bricks. The setting is informal and interactive with the audience asked to participate in the work by creating whatever takes their fancy.

Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s The cubic structural evolution project, 2004 was purchased by the Queensland Art Gallery in 2005 and has been brought to Sydney by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation as part of their Fugitive Structures architectural project. Eliasson is interested in experiments and envisioning situations that engage the imagination of his audience. This project represents a marketplace for ideas – where the role of the individual is both central and only one of many parts that make a whole.

In the same way that ideas from the audience transform the plastic blocks into ‘art’ – the exhibition itself becomes about the people who make it. Sometimes a participant begins with nothing, on other occasions with a partly constructed piece of architecture left by the last builder participant. From a pile of plastic rubble emerges everything from arabesque style buildings to pearly modern skyscrapers and futurist space-age imaginings. Despite the all-white colour of the bricks, colourful new worlds emerge.

Until April 27.
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Paddington.
Pic: Olafur Eliasson, The cubic structural evolution project, 2004, plastic lego blocks, dimensions variable. Purchased 2005. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant Collection: Queensland Art Gallery Photo: Sophie Holvast. Courtesy the artist and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation.