Olafur Eliasson — The Weather Project

A vast yellow sun hangs inside a building. A mirrored ceiling doubles people and architecture, while mist blurs the limits of the hall.

Eliasson did not create an actual sun. A semicircular bank of lamps and its reflection form the appearance of a complete disc. Visitors know the construction is an illusion, yet they lie beneath the light and look upward.

The subject is weather, but the work does more than imitate weather. It makes us experience how an environment is sensed and how one field of light is shared with strangers.

For Byun Shi-Ji, weather was not a temporary experience constructed inside a museum. It was a lifelong condition passing through the body. Eliasson builds an artificial climate within the city; Byun painted how Jeju’s climate reshapes people and things.

One allows visitors briefly to experience a climate. The other leaves the body of someone who lived within it for decades.

Beneath an artificial sun, people lie down as though it were real.