James Turrell

For over half a century, the American artist James Turrell has worked directly with light and space to create artworks that engage viewers with the limits and wonder of human perception. Turrell, an avid pilot who has logged over twelve thousand hours flying, considers the sky as his studio, material and canvas. New Yorker critic Calvin Tompkins writes, “His work is not about light, or a record of light; it is light—the physical presence of light made manifest in sensory form.”

Informed by his training in perceptual psychology and a childhood fascination with light, Turrell began experimenting with light as a medium in southern California in the mid-1960’s. The Pasadena Art Museum mounted a one-man show of his Projection Pieces, created with high-intensity projectors and precisely modified spaces, in 1967. Mendota Stoppages, a series of light works created and exhibited in his Santa Monica studio, paired Projection Pieces with structural cuts in the building, creating apertures open to the light outside. These investigations aligning and mixing interior and exterior, formed the groundwork for the open sky spaces found in his later Skyspace, Tunnel and Crater artworks.

Turrell often cites the Parable of Plato’s Cave to introduce the notion that we are living in a reality of our own creation, subject to our human sensory limitations as well as contextual and cultural norms. This is evident in Turrell’s over eighty Skyspaces, chambers with an aperture in the ceiling open to the sky. The simple act of witnessing the sky from within a Turrell Skyspace, notably at dawn and dusk, reveals how we internally create the colors we see and thus, our perceived reality.

Turrell has installed works in twenty-two countries and in seventeen US states that are open to the public or can be viewed by appointment. Beginning in 1967 Turrell has exhibited countless solo shows, most recently at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, National Gallery of Australia in Cranberra, The Pace Gallery in New York, Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, Galerie Almine Rech in Paris, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Turrell’s work has also been shared within group shows throughout the years at locations such as the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, Netherlands, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney, Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, and Neuesmuseum in Nuremberg, Germany. Turrell has been awarded the LACMA Film + Art Gala Honoree,  Honorary Doctorate from Pratt College, Icon in the Arts Award from the Bruce Museum, and National Medal of Arts along with many others. In addition to his awards in art he has also received a number in architecture including the Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in London and the Sustainable Building Award in Arizona.

Courtesy of the Artist