The park series (1998) is one of Olafur Eliasson’s earlier photo grids. A topology rather than a taxonomy, it documents a series of views of a single site: Hellisgerði (Lava Cave), a public park built on lava formations in the Reykjavik suburb of Hafnarfjördur. I’d seen The park series at the Menil, but did not recognize the photo above as coming from the grid. I thought it might have been a janky, early pavilion of some kind. And maybe it is, who knows?
But this image is the cover of an artist book Eliasson created for a 1998 show at the Reykjavik Art Museum — Kjarvalsstaðir. It’s called Hellisgerði, and is the 24 photos of the park that became The park series grid [which was not in the show, btw.] This echoes another little artist book from 1998, Landscapes with Yellow Background, which contains all 30 pictures in The landscape series (1997).
Which, it took me a second to realize that the edition of The park series grid I’d seen—which had come up for sale at Sotheby’s in 2013—had 25 prints, not 24: a 5×5 grid instead of a 4 x 6.
The extra print is at the lower right cornes, at the end [sic]; the series is a sequence, laid out left to right, top to bottom. Does that correspond to the geography? Does it mark a path through or around the park? Grids often look like contact sheets, which have a sense of chronology, documentation of a photographer’s experience photographing. But there’s no reason to make that assumption here.