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Artist Olafur Eliasson Fills Versailles With Dazzling Art Installations

At it again with the site-specific follies

Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has certainly been very busy of late: The artist has recently unveiled mindbending work for Shanghai's Long Museum and a series of modular lights for an Austrian gallery that nod at Europe's ongoing refugee crisis.

Now, photos have surfaced of his latest work, site-specific installations inside the 17th-century palace of Versailles and in its manicured gardens. The works, which opened today for public viewing and will remain on view until Saturday, October 30, include exterior works—like Waterfall, an aquatic art piece in Versailles's grand canal—and ones inside the palace, all of which adhere to a theme of water and its various states and are designed to play with visitors' sense of space and scale.

According to Designboom, it's all meant to pay subtle homage to Le Notre, the landscape architect who masterminded Versailles grounds, who, it's said, wanted to create a waterfall there but died before his vision was realized.

This isn't the first waterfall Eliasson has erected: In his 2008 New York City Waterfalls, he installed the titular water features at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge and on a barge that floated along the city's East River.

The photos are pretty impressive and reveal a set of works in several media and made of a host of materials, from brass to wood, steel to plastic, and many things in between. For a full look, head over to Designboom.