Olafur Eliasson: Turner colour experiments, Tate Britain

Background
Danish-Icelandic artist Eliasson is known for his large-scale installations that toy with elemental materials  like light, water and air. After studying at the Royal Academy of Arts in London he moved to Berlin where he still lives and works. He regularly exhibits internationally and even represented Denmark at the Venice Biennale in 2003.  
Turner and Romanticism 
You might ask what a contemporary artist like Eliasson has to do with the iconic British painter J.M.W  Turner and the Romantic Movement  at the end of the 18th century.  We have to think back to Eliasson’s installation The Weather Project (2003) of a dazzling artificial sun in a mist-filled Turbine Hall at Tate Modern to really put two and two together. Harnessing the ephemeral light of the natural world Eliasson spoke of the impact of the city upon weather as well as the same spiritual and emotional attachment to nature that we find in Turner’s landscape paintings. Think contemporary rejuvenation of Turner’s incredible and ground-breaking ability to express colour and light.
The exhibition
Eliasson returns to this subject following his Colour Experiment Paintings (2009) where every flicker of change across the visible spectrum was recreated in paint. This time Eliasson will use his intelligent shaping and framing of light to break down seven paintings by Turner, abstracting every colour hue to be re-mastered into a traditional colour wheel study. According to the artist this circular format will ‘generate a feeling of endlessness and allow the viewer to take in the artwork in a decentralised, meandering way’. This exploration of ‘transformation, movement,and atmosphere’ refers to Eliasson’s belief that identity is something ‘not necessarily solid and stable, but evolving through our many exchanges with others and with the world’. Be prepared for a mesmeric lesson in the nature of light and colour in art.