'Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures', 2024 is part of a series of installations within the exhibition 'Olafur Eliasson: OPEN' responding to MOCA Geffen’s building and the atmospheric conditions of Los Angeles. Eliasson draws attention to the relativity of our perception and challenges habitual ways of seeing and experiencing the world. The work feels like something built for the space programme. Positioned directly beneath a skylight, this enormous kaleidoscope is the only one in the gallery with walls that do not taper up to the top. The resulting reflections appear to extend to infinity, an effect that is magnified by strips of LEDs that echo the grid of the skylight. An immense vat of water at the top periodically tilts back and forth to unleash waves that cascade slowly from one end to the other and are reflected rhythmically as they trouble the grid of the skylight and LEDS and the sky above. Standing beneath this massive opening, the viewer has the sense of being underwater, of gazing into an impossible, inaccessible space above.

Video by SHIMURAbros
Music by mamoru