Olafur Eliasson

I arrived at the Tate, but immediately noticed that the flags were celebrating a different show. Olafur Eliasson.

I'd seen his work once before, when he took over the whole of the Turbine Hall for The Weather Project, a kind of sun machine.

The installations gave him international acclaim and he is nowadays known for interests in perception, colour, movement, and the interaction of people and their environments.

He's expanded to a studio of 100 people and engages the broader public sphere through works spanning the fields of sculpture, painting, photography, film, and installation.

I soon found myself immersed in his work. Whether it's a spotlit spray (Beauty), which catches the light to form fleeting rainbows, or an altogether larger set of spotlights casting defocused sheens across a wall, we can see that he has a playful touch to the work on display.

I also remember another piece, where he took some harvested pieces from a break-away Greenland glacier and placed them one chilly winter on the area outside the Tate Modern. Ice Watch to me echoed the Joseph Beuys theme from 7000 concrete trees.

That's where some of the newer works start to engage more. Beuys would place his concrete slabs and say that a living tree had to be planted for each one removed. That's getting inside the art work, which Eliasson's earlier work didn't attempt. He seems to show and tell rather than to get the observer to internalise. Like painting a river green to show its flows and eddies.

His latest 'idea wall' project recreates something from his studio and comes closer to making one really think about his themes. Around the theme of Climate it poses more questions.

As a snippet example, we get his ideas of rear view and forward facing time. Moving away from or towards? Always an interesting question.

And then there's his fog filled corridor to explore. It's a real pea-souper. There's monofilament lighting too, which flattens and sepia-tints any exploration. I had London smog flash-backs, but without the soot smell. And the long length of corridor makes it more necessary to be comfortable being by oneself.