Seeing spheres by OLAFUR ELIASSON offers a place to pause

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.