Bilbao - Tall Tree and the Eye by Anish Kapoor, 2009
This dazzling sculpture is made up of eighty spheres around three axes. Multiple images are reflected on its glassy surfaces. They stretch up, a stream of gleaming glassy bubble. Each sphere simultaneously reflects itself, its neighbours and all the components that make up the tower. We see our own repeated reflection and that of the architecture that surrounds us. The angle of the images changes as our gaze moves up the sculpture.
Tall Tree and the Eye conveys the transient nature of how things appear. Through its complex use of light and shade, volume and space, it makes us aware of the instability of the visible world. Time and place are suspended and altered. Though it is a very large piece of sculpture it comes across as somehow weightless and ephemeral.