Olafur Eliasson: Sometimes the river is the bridge

Olafur Eliasson does epic like few others. The Danish-Icelandic artist’s first Tokyo show in ten years will see breathtaking installation pieces from throughout his career fill the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo’s vast halls. Eliasson’s grandiose works demonstrate both his masterful manipulation of light and geometry, and deft incorporation of phenomena from the natural world. ‘Beauty’ (1993), in which a rainbow emerges in a darkened space, is just one such highlight.When Eliasson, a passionate environmentalist, captures the monumental power of nature, it’s for a specific reason: to make it explicitly clear that THIS – this glorious, miraculous planet with its winds, rains and rocks – is precisely what we’re systematically destroying by letting it melt, crack and fall apart. This is epic environmentalism and, yes, it’s sublime.