A 2000 piece by Olafur Eliasson. I found this to be the most fascinating artwork I came across in the Peekskill River Walk Park – and I almost missed it. From a distance it looks like a bright blue container. Only when you get up to it do you notice that there’s a viewing window at one end. Looking through this is like looking through a huge kaleidoscope, showing multiple reflections of whatever is seen through the other end – in my case a tree and a view of the Hudson.

According to Wikipedia:

Olafur Eliasson (Icelandic: Ólafur Elíasson; born 1967) is a Danish-Icelandic artist known for sculptures and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer’s experience. In 1995 he established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research. Olafur represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 and later that year installed The Weather Project in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London.

Olafur has engaged in a number of projects in public space, including the intervention Green river, carried out in various cities between 1998 and 2001; the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007, London, a temporary pavilion designed with the Norwegian architect Kjetil Thorsen; and The New York City Waterfalls, commissioned by Public Art Fund in 2008. He was a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts from 2009 to 2014 and is an adjunct professor at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design in Addis Ababa since 2014.

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