素描本中的蔓延钢笔插画，是艺术家最私密也最自由的创作形式之一。这些作品常常不受边框与主题的限制，线条在纸上无拘无束地延伸、交织，构建出庞大而细腻的视觉宇宙。从密集的建筑群落到梦境般的生物图腾，每一页都仿佛是意识流的物化，是创作者思想与手指同步流动的痕迹。钢笔的黑色线条既锐利又优雅，细节繁复之处令人惊叹，简约空白之处又留有呼吸的余地。这些插画往往不追求完成度，而更注重过程的沉浸与探索，像是一场视觉的漫游。在翻阅这些素描本时，观者仿佛进入了艺术家的脑海深处，窥见那些尚未成形的灵感与无声的叙事。这不仅是图像的堆叠，更是灵魂在纸面上悄然蔓延的旅程。

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.”