Olafur Eliasson recently completed Seeing Spheres, a new art installation on San Francisco’s waterfront. The artwork was unveiled on September 3, at Chase Center in San Francisco.
Seeing spheres, consists of five five-metre-tall polished hydroformed steel spheres that stand in a circle around a central space.
Each sphere supports a flat, circular mirror, framed by a ring of LEDs, which is oriented inwards to face the mirrors of the surrounding spheres. Together they produce a surprising environment of multilayered, reflected spaces in which the same people and settings appear again and again, visible from various unexpected angles.
“Seeing spheres is a public space that contains you and contains multitudes. We often think of public space as empty, negative space in the city, viewed from a car or crossed on the way to somewhere else. Seeing spheres offers a place to pause, where you see yourself from the outside, as a participant in society”, says Olafur Eliasson.
Tunnel-like sets of nested reflections open up in the mirrors, repeating countless times and disappearing into the distance.

Project title Seeing spheres
Artist Olafur Eliasson
Year 2019
Location Chase Center, San Francisco
Photography Matthew Millman
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