Since the 1960s, American artist James Turrell has been researching the psychology of perception. He is fascinated by light and all the ways it can be used in space and color. But the impact of Turrell’s work is most frequently seen in large-scale installations. His work can be seen in 30 countries around the world. Also from Los Angeles is Frank Gehry, a famous architect who created the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA. Read more at losangeles1.one.
Biography
J. Turrell was born in 1943 in LA. He graduated from Pasadena High School in 1961 and studied psychological science at Pomona College in Claremont, California, receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1965. After becoming interested in art, he entered graduate school at UCLA.
He had his first personal exhibit at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1967. The following year, the artist began to make assemblies in which light shining from behind one or more sides of a partition dissolved the edges and changed the viewer’s spatial discernment in the room. He took part in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art and Technology Program, researching perceptual sensations with artist R. Irwin and psychologist E. Wortz.
Turrell got his Master of Arts degree from Claremont Graduate University in 1973. The following year, he began work on his first major Skyspace. This is a diaphragm that is cut into the roof of a building. Turrell’s solo presentation took place in 1976 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Artist’s projects
Over the course of years, Turrell’s work has progressed with advances in light-based technology. But it has remained concentrated on the viewer’s discernment of light. His creation at the Guggenheim in 2014 covered a space with multicolored light that moved from shade to shade in a temporal order, ultimately embracing the entire spectrum.
His major project, started in 1977, is a volcanic crater in the middle of Arizona. It is full of holes and junctions that allow us to detect beams of light from other universes. In this way, Turrell expands the boundaries of the meaning of art.
Turrell’s work is at the crossing of two suggestions: that art may be produced from unconventional resources, and that a work of art might be a thought or an event rather than an object. Turrell turns light into art by influencing the viewer’s discernment, exploring the boundaries of these two notions, both of which are essential to conceptual art.
Deeply rooted in the psychology of perception, Turrell’s work seeks to show how vision overlaps with the brain. Optical illusions, or the perceptual unpredictability, are a key aspect of his work.
Light illusions are a highlight of the artist’s work
Turrell’s work is characterized by a blend of the ancient and the modern. He utilizes the most advanced computer and lighting technologies currently on the market to enhance and control optical effects. Simultaneously, the work is specific, as it is related to prehistoric art and astrology.
In the 1960s, the artist began using a high-intensity projector to project light onto the walls and corners of empty rooms. The artist basically painted or sculpted with light. The work comes from Turrell’s knowledge of color field painting, but takes it to a third dimension.
The viewer sees a shiny white cube floating in the air. If you walk from side to side, the figure becomes three-dimensional. On deeper look, the viewer discovers that two overlapping rays of light create this illusion. Due to the strength of the ray and the dimmed room ambience, the light seems to be a visual element. The bouncing of the rays off the walls gives the impression that the cube is the light emitter itself. Turrell’s work draws attention to the many geometric possibilities, making it clear that vision is an unstable process that depends on the brain and the eye. At the beginning of creating an artwork, Turrell carefully studies the location of the space to the sun.
Having long denied any religious meaning to his use of light, the artist reverted to his Quaker origins. Scholars have explored the connection of the artist’s work with the past and present sciences. The links connecting spirituality and light are ancient and exist in many diverse cultures. His works have affected generations of contemporary artists who concentrate on light-based work and discernment. The most successful of these is the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson.
House of light in Japan
The power of J. Turrell’s art is that it awakens and broadens the observational awareness in the viewer. So what better place to appreciate his art than a meditation retreat in a remote location in Japan. Guests can stay overnight at the House of Light. There, Turrell has combined elements of traditional Japanese architecture, aesthetics and culture with his own use of light and shadow. For example, the Japanese practice of “forest bathing” can be experienced in the room lit by fiber optics at night and by natural light seeping in from the view of the nearby forest during the day. The guests can bathe there.
Botanical garden in Mexico
The city of Culiacán in Mexico is known for its blood-red sunsets. But you can experience them in a whole new way thanks to the work of J. Turrell. He made the first celestial space in Mexico, which opened to the public in 2015. Located in a lush botanical garden, this sky space has a unique elliptical shape that, when viewed from above, resembles the shape of an eye. All of J. Turrell’s celestial spaces are designed as spaces for introspection, so he always recommends experiencing the space in silence.
Sky storage in the Netherlands
Designing an artificial crater in the dunes of the Netherlands might seem like a daunting feat, but not for the master of light Turrell. The celestial vault was built in 1996. It should be seen as a tool for looking at light and color. This 30-meter-wide, 40-meter-long instrument creates the optical illusion of a sky under a dome. To get to the crater, visitors must climb a flight of stairs up the dune and then walk through a tunnel leading to a grassy crater with a stone bench in the center. While lying on the bench, visitors can look out over the curved rim of the crater and observe the sky.
Rice University in Houston
Is it a spaceship or is it J. Turrell’s outer space? Both are characterized by out-of-this-world encounters that cannot be identified or explained. Rice University in Houston is home to one of the largest Turrell’s celestial spaces in the world. It can accommodate up to 120 people on two levels. Just before sunrise and sunset, LED light is projected onto the 72-foot square roof of the pyramid pavilion and a diaphragm in the ceiling, making a light show that plays with the changing colors of the sky at dawn and dusk. Added to showcasing daily symphonies of light, this celestial space is also acoustically equipped for musical shows.
Roden Crater in Arizona
In 1977, Turrell bought an extinct two-mile-wide volcano near Flagstaff, the city he calls home. Since then, he has excavated tons of earth to carve out viewing chambers and tunnels, transforming the volcanic cone into an observatory full of his signature light and space installations. Surrounded by the dark skies of Arizona’s remote high desert, Turrell’s unprecedented work to create the nation’s largest land art monument looks more like a Mayan temple than anything seen in the 21st century.