rainbow dreams maps the spectrum of contemporary art

how contemporary artists construct experience through color

Rainbow Dreams: Color and Light in Contemporary Art, a book published by The Monacelli Press, gathers more than 200 works by leading contemporary artists into a single, spectrum-spanning volume that examines how color operates as material, concept, and atmosphere. Edited by Olga Rei and Valentine Uhovski, the hardback positions color as structure, language, and experience.

Conceived as a visual archive and thematic survey, the book moves from the optical intensity of neon and LED installations to pigment-saturated canvases and monumental spatial interventions. Artists featured in Rainbow Dreams include Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama, Olafur Eliasson, Katharina Grosse, Judy Chicago, Jeff Koons, Sarah Sze, Mickalene Thomas, Paola Pivi, Nina Chanel Abney, Derrick Adams, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Kimsooja, Do Ho Suh, DRIFT and Tomás Saraceno.

Kimsooja, To Breathe – Leeum, 2022 | artwork © the artist / courtesy Leeum Museum of Art and Kimsooja Studio | image by Seungbeom Hur

from landscape interventions to chromatic abstraction

The book proposes that color remains one of contemporary art’s most adaptable tools. It can be structural or symbolic, immersive or ironic, technological or tactile. Across its 200 works, the spectrum becomes a way to organize perception itself.

Edited by Olga Rei, curator and co-founder of Rainbow Contemporary, a creative collective that designs and delivers charitable initiatives with a focus on community well-being, and Valentine Uhovski, a cultural strategist with experience across technology and media, the volume situates these practices within a broader cultural landscape shaped by digital saturation and visual acceleration. Rainbow Dreams accumulates examples and composes a chromatic field guide, moving across geographies, media, and generations.

Ugo Rondinone’s Seven Magic Mountains (2016) presents stacked fluorescent boulders rising from the Nevada desert, compressing geological time into a hyper-saturated monument. Ian Davenport’s Poured Staircase (2021) translates gravity into chromatic flow, as pigment cascades down architectural steps. Beatriz Milhazes’ Marilola (2010–15) layers pattern and color into rhythmic abstraction, while Athi-Patra Ruga’s The Future White Woman of Azania 1 (2012) uses theatrical excess to reframe identity and myth.

Kimsooja, To Breathe – A Mirror Woman, 2022 | artwork © the artist / courtesy Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Kimsooja Studio | image by Jaeho Chong

rainbow dreams pushes pigment and light into spatial form

Installation-based practices form a substantial part of the book’s narrative. Liz West’s Our Color (2016) transforms an interior into a corridor of prismatic light. Kimsooja’s To Breathe works (2022) flood museum spaces with diffraction and reflection. Gabriel Dawe’s Plexus A1 (2015) stretches thread into suspended chromatic gradients that behave like solidified rainbows.

Elsewhere, Sho Shibuya’s ongoing Sunrise from a small window series translates daily headlines into gradient abstractions, while Shoplifter’s Chromo Sapiens (2019) envelops viewers in synthetic hair installations that oscillate between pop spectacle and sensory immersion. The selection suggests that color today often exceeds the canvas, becoming environmental and bodily.

Do Ho Suh, Installation view: Do Ho Suh: Passage/s, 2017 | © Do Ho Suh. courtesy the artist; Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London; and Victoria Miro | image by Thierry Bal

Ian Davenport, Poured Staircase, 2021 | artwork © the artist | image by Prudence Cuming Associates

Sho Shibuya, Sunrise from a small window, May 2020–ongoing | image by © shoshibuya

Paola Pivi, Untitled (ladder), 2021. Image credit: artwork © the artist / courtesy Paola Pivi and Perrotin | image by Tanguy Beurdeley

Gabriel Dawe, Plexus A1, 2015 | artwork © the artist | image by Ron Blunt

Tomás Saraceno, Poetic Cosmos of the Breath, 2007. | artwork © the artist / Courtesy Tomás Saraceno | image by Studio Tomás Saraceno

Rob Pruitt, Installation view: New Faces, 2022 | artwork © the artist / Courtesy Rob Pruitt and 303 Gallery | image by Justin Craun

the volume situates these works within a broader cultural landscape

Beatriz Milhazes, Marilola, 2010–15 | artwork © the artist / © Beatriz Milhazes Studio | image by Eduardo Ortega

Bernard Frize, Troe, 2019. | artwork © the artist / Courtesy Bernard Frize and Perrotin | image by Roman März

conceived as a visual archive and thematic survey

Shoplifter, Chromo Sapiens, 2019.| artwork © the artist / commissioned by Icelandic Art Center | image by Elisabet Davidsdottir

the book proposes that color remains one of contemporary art’s most adaptable tools

the spectrum becomes a way to organize perception itself

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Athi-Patra Ruga, The Future White Woman of Azania 1, 2012. | artwork © the artist / Courtesy Athi-Patra Ruga and WHATIFTHEWORLD | image by Hayden Phipps

Taisuke Koyama, Untitled (Melting Rainbows 061), 2010. | artwork © the artist

Lauren Halsey, auntie fawn on tha 6, 2021. | artwork © the artist / Courtesy Lauren Halsey and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles | image by Allen Chen / SLH Studio