将蛇、昆虫与花卉融合在一幅画面中,听起来或许有些矛盾,但正是这种看似不协调的组合,激发了视觉与情感的张力。蛇蜿蜒而神秘,象征着转变与诱惑;昆虫微小却精致,代表自然界中复杂而微妙的秩序;而花卉则是柔美与生命力的象征。艺术家通过这些元素的交织,不仅展现出自然界的多样性与奇妙,也在探讨生命中对立而共存的状态——美与危险,脆弱与坚韧,吸引与疏离。这类创作往往采用细腻的描绘手法,使观者在惊叹于图像细节的同时,也不禁反思人与自然的关系。这些作品并非单纯装饰,而是一种寓意丰富的艺术语言,让我们重新认识那些被忽视的小生命,以及隐藏在自然背后的深刻美感。
Usually when a museum is flooded with water, something has gone seriously wrong. But at the Fondation Beyeler just outside the Swiss city of Basel, the flooding of the museum is all part of the show: a new site-specific installation called Life by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson.
The artist has removed one side of the Renzo Piano-designed building (with the architect’s blessing) and let the feature pond—usually separated from the climate-controlled interior by a large glass wall—into the museum. Visitors can navigate the waters, which are up to 80cm deep, using a series of walkways that run in and out of the building. At night, the interior is lit up with blue light.

Eliasson has also dyed the water a fluorescent green and filled it with pond plants, including water lilies and shellflowers selected by the landscape architect Günther Vogt. The water has been coloured using uranine, an organic dye that is commonly used to observe water currents, and which Eliasson has used previously for his Green River (1998) work where he dyed rivers in cities such as Stockholm, Tokyo and Los Angeles.

In an accompanying artist statement, Eliasson writes: “Together with the museum, I am giving up control over the artwork, so to speak, handing it over to human and non-human visitors, to plants, microorganisms, the weather, the climate—many of these elements that museums usually work very hard to keep out.”
The southern side of the building will be open to the elements for the duration of the show, which ends in July. Eliasson writes that “even if no human visitors are in the space, other beings—insects, bats, or birds, for instance—can fly through or take up temporary abode within it.” This possibility is very much part of the work, with the artist adding that when he first spoke to the museum’s director Sam Keller about ideas for the show, he thought to himself: “Why don’t we invite everyone to the show? Let’s invite the planet—plants and various species”.
The show is open 24 hours a day. “Visitors can access the installation at any time. After 9.30pm they do not need a ticket,” says a spokeswoman. She adds that, in terms of non-human visitors, so far there have been “insects, spiders, ducks, a goose and cats.”