FROM THE EARTH TO THE SKY, JAMES TURRELL’S SCULPTING OF LIGHT

American artist James Turrell has dedicated his life’s work to investigating the materiality of light. Exploring and entwining space, color and perception, Turrell creates unforgettable sensorial experiences across the world. His aim: to bring celestial objects like the sun and moon into the spaces that we inhabit. However, the most monumental of his works is yet to be realized - the visionary project Roden Crater, set inside a 400,000 year-old extinct volcano in the middle of the Painted Desert in northern Arizona.

Set in an otherworldly scene of desert and shrubland, the Arizonan desert is a vast, demanding yet intriguing place. In the early 70s, it captivated American artist James Turrell to explore the landscape by plane, flying over the Painted Desert until he came across the crater.
Purchasing the extinct volcano in 1979 - in addition to the 277 square miles of land surrounding it since - Turrell’s aim has been to create a space where sky and land can come together. And it’s nearing completion. From first re-shaping the top of the extinct volcano (moving 1.3 million cubic yards of Earth to form the Crater Bowl) to carving corridors and constructing multiple spaces so that the design can allow for people to experience the sun and stars in their purest and most direct form, Turrell consulted with astronomers and technicians to determine accurate alignments that would highlight celestial events such as the summer and winter solstices. Kanye most notably recently supported the artist with a 10 million dollar endowment, and at the same time, Arizona State University pledged partnership and financial support to help bring the project closer to completion.
 

Turrell’s aim is for people to experience these celestial events not just observe them from afar. The work, Roden Crater, will be the purest viewing platform ever constructed, a site-specific design for experiencing the benefits of light, Turrell’s way. “I make things that take you up into the sky. But it's not about the landforms. I'm working to bring celestial objects like the sun and moon into the spaces that we inhabit. I apprehend light - I make events that shape or contain light.” This is the breadth of Turrell’s vision.
Born in Los Angeles in 1943, Turrell’s interest in cosmological phenomena developed from a young age as he took regular plane flights with his father, an aeronautical engineer. Both his parents were of the Quaker faith, and this in turn shaped his view of the world in addition to its view from above - from the sky. At 16, Turrell gained his pilot’s license and this passion in the coming years would undeniably guide the pathways of his life.
 

At university, Turrell studied psychology and mathematics, later becoming a key figure in the Southern California Light and Space movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. Describing his practise as ‘perceptual art’, his work investigates the materiality of light in all its forms.
Turrell’s oeuvre spans across installation, all the way down to small-scale works such as architectural models, holograms, and works on paper. His series of Skyspaces, 80 across the world, are enclosed spaces that frame the sky. The simple act of concentrating a view on a space in this way, and the colors it reveals, creates our perceived reality. Turrell cites the Parable of Plato’s Cave as an introduction to 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). Skyspaces also communicates this, an extension of this theory. But really, the works could be an artwork by God, for us to intentionally focus on the beauty around us without distraction, to really value it. Through this context, framing, the sky can tell us so much more as seen here. Turrell’s other most notable works are his Ganzfelds, which fill a room with a neon haze as the viewer walks into, then stands in awe, of the space surrounding them. Ganzfeld is a German word to describe the phenomenon of the total loss of depth perception as in the experience of a white-out, but Turrell takes it further. A journey through colored light, Ganzfelds each remove a sense of time and place, for the viewer to truly connect to themselves, their thoughts and physical being.
 

His Perceptual Cell works evoke the same. Turrell’s made them since the 1980’s, and the one I experienced at MONA in Tasmania was one of the biggest he’s ever made; a large circular cell, big enough for 2 people to lay inside, guided in and onto a padded platform by operators wearing white and advising “this might be abit like an acid trip”. The likening wouldn’t have been too dissimilar. Changing lights recur in light, dark, fast, slow, faster patterns - and become so intense that even when you close your eyes you see them. And therein lies the magic. Changing our perception of what’s around us. In Perceptual Cell, visitors are able to transcend into the deepest parts of the mind, and just... go along for the ride.
Once a Turrell sensorial installation is experienced there is no going back. It’s embedded in the mind and body of every visitor.
Not limited to installation works, Turrell’s Aten Reign print series challenges the limits of translating light through printed ink. Turrell explains, “There are major differences between color in light and color off of a page”. Created over multiple years, the series is made with Ukiyo-e woodcuts that are hand-carved and printed using fourteen colors, twelve woodblocks, and one metal plate.
 

At 78 years of age, he’s not slowing down. Worldwide, Turrell’s works can be found in the most unlikely, remote and wondrous contexts. Chichu Art Museum on Naoshima in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, MONA in Tasmania, the Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery chapel in Berlin, Kelder Forest Park in England, Ekebergparken Sculpture Park in Oslo, Devin Booker’s home (!) and in a small mountain village on the ski slopes in Austria. In the world’s highest vineyard in Colomé, Argentina, a museum dedicated to Turrell is found with numerous works within nine rooms, all from the Hess Art Collection. Outside, the largest skyspace Unseen Blue (2002), occupies the courtyard. Ofcourse, almost every major museum holds a Turrell, if not a custom like the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra with their own, original skyspace. With multiple works worldwide, the enigmatic artist continues to invite new audiences to experience harmony with body and mind, opening our perspectives to the world around us. Heightening our senses of the heavens and Earth, his incomparable work is profound, moving those that experience it in the flesh.
Turrell is continuing to show us that the sky is within reach. He’s bringing the cosmos down to Earth.

Text: Monique Kawecki