James Turrell

After participating in the Art and Technology program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the late 1960s, Turrell enrolled in the Studio Art program at Claremont Graduate University, California, earning his MA in 1973. Since then, he has continued to explore perceptual phenomena ranging from sensory deprivation to intense optical effects. The artist’s original Skyspace works, in which apertures cut into the roofs of buildings cause the sky to appear as a flat plane within reach, date from 1974. And in 1976, Turrell produced his first Space Division Construction installations, in which an opening onto an illuminated space is perceived first as a flat surface and then as a window onto a mist-filled room. Beginning in the 1980s, Turrell has also produced works using extremely dim light, often in site-specific installations designed to be seen from outside the buildings in which they are installed.

After acquiring a volcanic cinder cone in Northern Arizona’s Painted Desert region in 1977, Turrell began working to convert the feature into Roden Crater, a large-scale work designed to function as a naked-eye observatory. Roden Crater reconceives the surrounding landscape as a multisensory experience and provides a controlled environment for the contemplation of the sky and any celestial bodies visible from Earth. The work comprises tunnels, portals, and apertures that open onto the sky, facilitating an experience of isolated and intensified light.

In 2001, Turrell began the Glass Series, recent entries of which are programmed using LED technology while still employing physical forms related to the foundational Shallow Space Constructions, in which slivers of light emerging from behind constructed walls alter the perspective of the rooms in which they are installed, sometimes making the walls appear suspended. Each installation features planes of light that move slowly against and into one another behind an aperture, generating alternating impressions of total flatness and near-infinite depth. Testing our perception of space and evoking the paintings of Mark Rothko, the results again prompt a slower, more appreciative mode of looking.