Installation art aims to transform viewers' perceptions by filling spaces with constructed environments that utilize various materials and locations. It differs from traditional art forms by incorporating the changing perspectives of moving viewers who can interact within the pieces. Key developments included early 20th century experiments, 1960s "happenings", and emerging technologies now enable interactive digital installations. Installation art remains a dominant contemporary medium due to its immersive experiences for viewers.

1. Installation
Art
SIT DOLOR AMET

2. Installation Art
Installation art is a visual artwork that can be constructed from a variety of materials
and can be created in a variety of locations. Installation art aims to change a viewers
perception of the space and environment in which it is in. This art differs from other
three-dimensional art mediums because it utilizes the changing perspective of the viewer
as they move. Viewers are able to become involved and even participate within the
piece, whereas a sculpture is made to be viewed from the outside.

3. Installation Art
Installation art is one of the most powerful and immersive of all art forms. In contrast
with traditional mediums such as painting and sculpture, installation art is designed to fill
whole rooms or even entire gallery spaces.
Emerging as a bona fide art movement in the 1960s, installation art has since become
one of the most popular and widespread strands of contemporary art practice, with
artists embracing ever more adventurous and playful ways of transforming the gallery
experience.

4. A Brief History of Installation Art
Installation art arose as an art movement in the early 1960s, but before then the seeds had
already been sown.
In 1923 Russian Constructivist El Lissitsky first explored the interaction between painting
and architecture with his world-renowned Proun Room, where two and three-dimensional
geometric shards interact with one another in space.
Ten years later German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters began making his ongoing series of
constructions titled Merzbau, 1933 from assembled panels of wood that seem to grow
outwards from the walls.
French Surrealist and Dada artist Marcel Duchamp was also one of the first to playfully
experiment with how visitors navigate a gallery space by filling it with a complex web in Mile
of String, 1942.

5. A Brief History of Installation Art
In the 1950s ‘happenings’ were all the rage across the United States, with artists
including Claes Oldenberg and Allan Kaprow merging experimental performance art with
crudely assembled objects, often with a politicized agenda.
By the 1960s the term ‘installation art’ had been adopted by leading publications
including Artforum, Arts Magazine and Studio International to describe a huge rising
trend for assemblages and environments.
These artworks deliberately evaded the art market, since they were almost impossible
to sell and had to be taken apart at the end of the exhibition. Instead, they have lived on
through photographic documentation, known as an ‘installation shot.’

6. American artist Allan Kaprow’s Yard, 1961,
signaled a new era in art history. The artist filled
the outdoor backyard of New York’s Martha
Jackson Gallery to the brim with black rubber auto
tires and tarpaper-wrapped forms before inviting
willing participants to climb, jump and frolic like
children in this giant playground. His iconic
installation art opened up new, sensorial
experiences for visitors and allowed them to
engage with art like never before. As well as
exploring abstract ideas around solids and voids in
space, Kaprow also brought improvisation and
group participation into his art, taking it closer to
the reality of ordinary life, as he explains, “Life is
much more interesting than art. The line between
art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps
indistinct, as possible.”
Here are some of the most revolutionary and influential installations from
throughout art history:

7. A giant of twentieth-century art, German sculptor
Joseph Beuys made The End of the Twentieth
Century, 1983-85 just a year before he died. Thirty-
one hulking rocks of basalt rock were gathered
together and strewn across the floor to create this
installation art, each with its own unique sense of
history, weight and character. Into each rock, Beuys
drilled away a cylindrical hole in which he stuffed
clay and felt. He then polished and reattached the
drilled away pieces, leaving only the slightest trace
of his artistic intervention in each one. In doing so,
he collapsed together old/new, natural/man-made
and difference/repetition. Beuys also referenced the
dawn of a new century still weighed down by history
as heavy as his basalt rocks, commenting, “This is
the end of the twentieth century. This is the old
world, on which I press the stamp of the new world.”
Here are some of the most revolutionary and influential installations from
throughout art history:

8. British artist Cornelia Parker’s Cold Dark Matter: An
Exploded View, 1991, is one of the most striking and
memorable installation artworks of recent times. To create this
work, Parker filled an old shed with domestic junk including old
toys and tools, before having the entire shed exploded in a field
by the British Army. She then gathered together all the
fragments left behind and suspended them mid-air as if
permanently suspended in the ‘b’ of the bang. When set amidst
eerie lighting these once familiar items become abstracted and
unrecognizable fragments, while the title ‘Cold Dark Matter’
further emphasizes a sense of gothic mystery, referencing what
Parker calls, “matter in the universe that hasn’t yet been
measured.”
Here are some of the most revolutionary and influential installations from
throughout art history:

9. Here are some of the most revolutionary and influential installations from
throughout art history:
Designed to resemble the cool, clinical atmosphere of an
old-fashioned pharmacy, Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy, 1992
contains a vast arrangement of pill packets, bottles and
medical instruments set amidst an austere white backdrop.
But his installation art is far too geometric and ordered to be
real, with boxes and packages arranged into a neatly
gridded system to resemble the clean purity of Minimalist
art. Arranging pill packets into repeat patterns of enticingly
bright colors highlights the seductive nature of
pharmaceutical products, lending them all the desirability
and danger of a sweet shop. This seductive quality of
Hirst’s installation highlights our modern-day obsession with
medicine as a tool to extend our life expectancy without
question, as Hirst explains, “We all die, so this kind of big
happy, smiling, minimal, colorful, confident facade that
medicine and drug companies put up is not flawless – your
body lets you down, but people want to believe in some
kind of immortality.”

10. Here are some of the most revolutionary and influential installations from
throughout art history:
With all the magical mystery of a childhood fairy-
tale, Belgian artist Carsten Holler’s Mushroom
Room, 2000 is a treat for the senses. Holler
deliberately selected the red-and-white agaric
fungus because of its psychoactive qualities,
grossly exaggerating their size, colors, and textures
to amplify their dramatic impact. Suspending them
from the ceiling upside down forces visitors to
squeeze and duck their way through them, turning
this installation art into an interactive experience
that engages the entire body and mind. Holler likens
the transformative power of these mushrooms to
the act of viewing and interacting with a work of art,
arguing both can induce the same mind-altering
experience of imaginative awakening that is at the
core of creative thinking.

11. Here are some of the most revolutionary and influential installations from
throughout art history:
Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson designed his
impressively ambitious installation artwork The Weather
Project, 2003 for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, replicating the
effect of a huge sun emerging through a fine mist. Low-frequency
lamps around his artificial sun allowed only the golden glow of
the sun to dominate the space, reducing all surrounding colors to
the magical shades of gold and black. Master of illusion, Eliasson
made his glowing orb from a semi-circle of light which is reflected
by mirrored panels on the ceiling that complete the circle, lending
the upper half of the sun a hazy, shimmering quality that mimics
the real sun. These mirrored panels continued across the entire
ceiling, allowing visitors to see themselves reflected as if floating
in the sky above them, creating the sensation of hovering
weightlessly in space.

12. Here are some of the most revolutionary and influential installations from
throughout art history:
Described by art critic Adrian Searle as “a very fine
mess,” British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor’s
Svayambh, 2007, is both ludicrous and
astonishing. Made from 30 tonnes of soft wax and
pigment, a slow train moves back and forth on a
specially designed track between the pristine
arches of the museum (he has made several
versions for different institutions) leaving in its wake
an unbelievably messy trail of sticky, gooey matter.
Kapoor’s installation art ‘train’ is a colossal 10
meters long and ignites our senses on numerous
levels, through texture, surface, smell, and color;
the distinctive shade of primitive red seen in this
and many of his other works seems tied to our most
basic and fundamental human instincts.

13. Here are some of the most revolutionary and influential installations from
throughout art history:
Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored
Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years
Away, 2013 is one of many immersive ‘Infinity
Rooms’ which have fascinated gallery-goers around
the world. Made by installing mirrored panels
around the walls, ceiling, and floors of a small,
enclosed space, Kusama then fills it with tiny
networks of colored lights or objects that refract
around the room and create the effect of endless,
infinite space. Visitors entering her room walk along
a mirrored walkway and see prismatic reflections of
themselves scattered all around the room,
surrounded by colored light. Much like entering a
star-filled universe or merging into the digital
superhighway, there’s nothing quite like the
experience of an Infinity Room.

14. Here are some of the most revolutionary and influential installations from
throughout art history:
Random International’s much-celebrated installation
artwork Rain Room, 2013, concisely merges art and technology
into one. Visitors can pass through a gushing torrent of rainwater
but miraculously remain dry, as sensors detect their movement and
cause the rain to stop around them. This deceptively simple idea
from the London-based collective embraces a natural symbiosis
between art and viewer as the installation only comes alive through
physical engagement. The artists of Studio International also tap
into the fundamental role of technology in harnessing and
stabilizing our natural environment, suggesting we can have a
positive and mutually beneficial relationship with our landscape,
rather than exploiting it for personal short-term gain. Made for
temporary gallery spaces around the world, the first permanent
installation of Rain Room was installed at the Sharjah Art
Foundation in the United Arab Emirates in 2018.

15. Here are some of the most revolutionary and influential installations from
throughout art history:
In Phyllida Barlow’s Dock, 2014, made for Tate
Britain, a series of huge haphazard assemblages
made from found debris are nailed together and
suspended around the room. Piles of scrap wood
are hastily tacked together to form flimsy-looking
scaffolding, onto which bundles of brightly colored
fabric, old trash bags, and discarded clothing are
bound with reams of colored tape. There is
something ridiculously playful and appealing about
Barlow’s knocked-up arrangements, tapping into a
child-like desire to construct something from
nothing. But more importantly, the sense of urgency
and flux her upcycled arrangements create seems
to reflect the anxious instability of living in the
contemporary urban environment.

16. The Legacy of Installation Art
Since its conception, installation art has
remained one of the most dominating
mediums of contemporary art. With
advancing technologies, more artists are
now focusing on interactive digital
installations, and this advancement has
opened doors to entirely new possibilities for
installation art and its relevance in today’s
society. Its unifying power and immersive
connection with the viewer makes installation
art a revelation that continues to constantly
reinvent itself.
Carpet of Lights in The Shanghai Film Museum designed
by Coordination Asia, via Coordination Asia