Olafur Eliasson: One-way colour tunnel

Olafur Eliasson's One-way colour tunnel (2007) invites visitors into a dazzling arched walkway of prismatic color. Move through the suspended passage to experience fluctuating, vibrant hues refracted through triangular glass and acrylic panels. With this sensory experience, Eliasson encourages us to reevaluate our relationship with the environment: "Taking one's time means to engage actively in a spatial and temporal situation, either within the museum or in the outside world." One-way colour tunnel was created for the museum's atrium bridge on the occasion of the 2007–8 exhibition Take your time: Olafur Eliasson. One-way colour tunnel is an arched walkway constructed from triangular panels of colour-effect acrylic glass and acrylic mirrors. The panels are assembled into a rugged form, with the longest triangles at the base of the tunnel and the shortest triangles forming pyramidal outcroppings on the ceiling. As visitors move through the passageway, they observe a fluctuating display of varied hues caused by the colour-effect acrylic glass, which changes tone depending on how light strikes it. When they look back, however, instead of seeing the colourful environment they just passed through, they are met with the dull black backs of the panels, with only hints of colour escaping through the interstices.