Photo by Paul Pedersen, Beauty, 1993

In recent years, Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson has become a prime exemplar of the international art star. He’s received no shortage of praise for his installations, which frequently incorporate light, water, and various natural or unnatural representations of the earth’s elements, to become the fine-tuned infrastructure for an experience of the perception of beauty as it manifests in the world. His work often inspires the kind of gee-whiz wonderment that youngsters first experience in learning about the physical sciences, but they rest clearly in the domain of fine art, drawing on crafts as much conceptual as technical.
     Four years ago, at the age of 36, the artist experienced a major career breakthrough when the Tate Modern commissioned him to fill their massive Turbine Hall, with a site-specific installation. Eliasson’s Weather Project tapped into a global phenomenon — the weather — in a way that particularly resonated with UV-deprived Londoners. The large former power plant became a literal and metaphorical mirror of the local landscape, with a giant “sun” regulating the accumulation and dissipation of mist beneath a mirrored “sky”. Visitors came repeatedly to bask, frolic, and picnic. They also came to meditate. By taking the weather’s core elements out of circulation and re-creating them within the museum, the artist offered witnesses the space and time to reconsider their relationship to reality. This is his oft-stated agenda, which tends to be met in very visceral, participatory ways.