Olafur Eliasson is going to blur out all the advertising screens in Piccadilly Circus

Have you had enough of being bombarded with advertising? Well, so has Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. The guy who put a massive fake sun in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall is now coming to Piccadilly Circus and blurring out all of its massive, famous digital advertising boards. 

The new artwork, called ‘Lifeworld’, will take over the iconic screens in central London in October, and will be simultaneously shown in Seoul, Berlin and New York. The piece is created by feeding images of the public space in which it’s being shown directly back at viewers, but abstracted.

‘It’s not about banning the screens,’ he told the Guardian, ‘but the blur is an attempt to reach out and say, “Here’s something beautiful”. It’s about slowing down. It’s about tenderness. It’s about abstraction.’

It’s about tenderness, people. 

Anyway, this Eliasson news comes hot on the heels (or at least tepid on the heels) of the announcement that he will be unveiling his first permanent sculpture in the UK, creating a ‘tide-trapping’ artwork in Cumbria. 

Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Lifeworld’ will launch on Oct 1 at 8pm. Free. More details here.

Want more art? Here, have the top ten exhibitions in London.

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