Nice piece showing you how they built the huge James Turrel installation Aten Reign in the Guggenheim Museum Rotunda.
Archives For James Turrell
The Germans seem to be the only people who can document James Turrell’s work correctly. This is an excellent tour of his installation in Germany at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and a short overview of The Rodan Crater Project.
This is one of his largest Ganzfeld works named for the “visual effect produced by the phenomenon of perception caused by exposure to an unstructured, uniform stimulation field”. Really disappointing the Guggenheim could not exhibit one of these incredible works for his retrospective in NYC.
Only James Turrell would have a museum in the middle nowhere high on a plateau in Argentina (and built by the wine billionaire Donald Hess). Here is a short tour.
In her NY Times review Roberta Smith, missing pretty much everything Turrell’s work is about, stated the exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, “will probably be the bliss-out environmental art hit of the summer.”
What she is also missing in her review is that this is the smallest of 3 Retrospectives and the really great summer exhibitions are in LA and Houston.. See my post
Still there is no doubt this is his largest non permanent work so make sure you reserve a ticket as its gonna be crowded…
Update: I attended the exhibition and was knocked out by the major work that filled the central core of the museum but the rest of exhibition was very small and the final work at the very top of the museum was a complete dud in my opinion. I am not sure it was working correctly that day as it was just a gray rectangle on a wall. No one I was with could get it to pop… All the other works were older and while important to his history are kind of boring in 2013. I really don’t think the Guggenheim did him justice at all by this pick. I don’t think 4 works adds up to any kind of retrospective and certainly not the four they picked. His newer works have all seemed much more interesting, colorful and intense and it is very confusing why this show is so full of ancient work. Something tells me they did not want to spend the money it would take to get newer more complected works installed.
I give it 2 stars for the work upstairs and 5 stars for the atrium piece (which you need to spend at least 15 min with).
via the New York Times
In case you have not heard James Turrell is having 3 simultaneous retrospectives across the United States taking up over 20,000 square feet of exhibition space. Something no artist has ever been honored with at this scale. There is a reason folks and this summer is your only chance to see these master ambient light works and learn more about his life long project Roden Crater. Great article on him at New York Times
via NYTimes