For more than a decade, Olafur Eliasson has been making art on a grand scale by recreating the sensory effects of the natural landscape, often inspired by his Icelandic homeland. In the winter of 2003–4, two million visitors to the Tate Modern in London frolicked in, sunbathed under, and marveled at The Weather Project, a giant fake sun made of 200 low-pressure sodium lamps, mirrors, and mist that he installed in the museum’s Turbine Hall. By deploying the most basic lighting technologies to evoke a sublime environment, Eliasson’s creation earned as much critical acclaim as it did popularity.
Since September, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has hosted the first American survey devoted to Eliasson. The exhibition, Take Your Time—which will be on view in San Francisco until February 24 and travels to the Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 in New York in April, followed by the Dallas Museum of Art—features mostly room-size installations of his work from 1993 to the present, including a kaleidoscopic tunnel commissioned for the building’s fifth-floor indoor bridge. The pieces can seem like sleights of hand, but they capture the viewer’s attention through their simple and evident construction—as if a magician has allowed you to peek into his wardrobe.
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