“One of [Olafur Eliasson’s] most recent pieces is a direct attack on the universality of the white cube (The Light Setup). Installed at the Malmo Konsthall, in Sweden, the 16,145-square-foot exhibition was set in an empty hall illuminated by 1,500 fluorescent lights behind giant screens—some on the walls, some on the ceilings—programmed to deliver different shades of white light, each affecting the way people moved across space. ‘I developed a system that allowed me to take a spectrographic reading of the exact quality of the white light in different parts of the world, at different hours of the day, and during different seasons,’ Eliasson explains. Much like a perfumer mixing high-tech fragrance notes replicating natural ones, he was able to create visual cocktails of ivory, chalky, icy, creamy, milky, and pearly lights, debunking the idea that there is such a thing as “pure” white.”

—Veronique Vienne, from the article Optical Magic, Metropolis magazine, May 2006.