Archives For James Turrell

Working with ambient light his entire career James Turrell is probably our greatest living artist.  He has built versions of these Sky Spaces all over the world (mostly to fund his colossal life’s work, The Roden Crater Project). Most are in private hands and built by multimillionaires but each is unique. Here is a rare glimpse of what one looks like inside.

This Twilight Epiphany Sky Space was just built at Rice University and one of the few public ones you can visit. You can see how it incorporates much of what Turrell has learned making the Roden Crater Project. The video is a marketing piece and has way toooooo much talking b ut there are excellent moments (when everyone shuts up) and you can see the work for what it is – pure genius.

Photo via Architectural Record

Standing adjacent to the Shepherd School of Music on the Rice University campus, James Turrell’s “Twilight Epiphany Skyspace has landed. The pyramidal structure accommodates 120 people on two levels and is acoustically engineered for musical performances and a laboratory for music school students. Constructed of grass, concrete, stone and composite steel, the structure is equipped with an LED light performance that projects onto the ceiling and through the 72-foot square knife-edge roof, which is open to the sky. Turrell’s composition of light complements the natural light present at sunrise and sunset, and transforms the Skyspace into a locale for experiencing beauty and reflective interaction with the surrounding campus and the natural world…

via Rice University web site

Most of his Sky Spaces are in private hands and built by multimillionaires but each is unique. Here is a rare glimpse of what one looks like inside.

The tour starts at the 2 min mark.

Maybe the most important exhibitions of this decade. James Turrell is the master of creating exquisite and ethereal beauty out of pure ambient light. Legend has it that his installation at the Stedelijk Museum dropped people to their knees. These are extremely rare and complicated works.  You best run (don’t walk) to these once in a lifetime events.

James Turrell: A Retrospective explores nearly fifty years in the career of James Turrell (b. 1943, Los Angeles), a key artist in the Southern California Light and Space movement of the 1960s and 70s. The exhibition includes early geometric light projections, prints and drawings, installations exploring sensory deprivation and seemingly unmodulated fields of colored light, and recent two-dimensional work with holograms. One section is devoted to the Turrell masterwork in process, Roden Crater, a site-specific intervention into the landscape just outside Flagstaff, Arizona, which will be presented through models, plans, photographs, and films.

via  LACMA

James Turrell has been working with light for over 20 years. His Rodan Crater Project  has been called America’s Sistine Chapel.  To fund it he also makes what he was originally known for: Light Installations of exquisite and ethereal beauty. Legend has it that his installation at the Stedelijk Museum dropped people to their knees. Unfortunately you will not be seeing them at Pace but if you head over to PS1 he has a permanent installation you can spend all day with.

Pace Gallery – “Roden Crater and Autonomous Structures” – James Turrell

Go here for a good video with him speaking about his work.

What we wish we could see….