JAMES TURRELL: LIGHT OF THE PRESENCE
Gagosian is pleased to announce Light of the Presence, a pairing of two works from Glass Series (2001–) by James Turrell, opening at the gallery in Athens. Knowing Light (2007) and Rounded Up (2024) are on view in two separate rooms on the ground floor.
April 11 – May 25, 2024
Since the 1960s, Turrell has been exploring perceptual phenomena ranging from sensory deprivation to optical effects. In 1966, he began working with light in his studio in Ocean Park, California, and early works such as Afrum-Proto (1966), which employ planes of light in relation to architectural structures, became the basis for an ongoing manipulation of built and natural environments.
Initially incorporating neon into the works in Glass Series, Turrell has, over the past fifteen years, turned to computer-programmed LED panel technology, which allows for richer hues and lower light levels. Among the other works in Glass Series is Aurora B: Tall Glass (2010), a large, rectangular-format piece in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Knowing Light and Rounded Up feature planes of light seen through geometrically shaped apertures. Changing color over an extended period, these surfaces generate alternating impressions of flatness and depth, toying with our perception of space and extending its psychological reverberation.
Each shape’s illumination spreads from its center and occasionally resolves itself into a single, flat hue. A small gap between each work’s glass frontage and the gallery wall into which it is set contributes physical dimensionality and ensures that the tint also radiates out into the environing space, altering viewers’ experience of the entire interior.
Glass Series resonates with Roden Crater, a vast artwork that reconceives the landscape of the Painted Desert region of Northern Arizona as a controlled environment for the contemplation of the light and space of the sky. Built within a volcanic cinder cone, Roden Crater represents the culmination of the artist’s lifelong research in the field of human visual and psychological perception
James Turrell was born in 1943 in Los Angeles and lives and works in Flagstaff, Arizona. Collections include the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Tate Modern, London; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The James Turrell Museum opened in Colomé, Argentina, in 2009. Exhibitions include Stedlijk Museum Amsterdam (1976); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1980); Two Spaces, Israel Museum, Jerusalem (1982–83); Occluded Front, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1985–86); The Other Horizon, Museum für angewandte kunst, Vienna (1998–99); Into the Light, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh (2002–03); The Wolfsburg Project, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2009–10); The Light Inside, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2013); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2013); Immersive Light, Long Museum, Shanghai (2017); Passages of Light, Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2019); Into the Light, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2021–25); and Light, Space, and the Art of Perception, Center of International Contemporary Art Vancouver, Canada (2023–24). A retrospective organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in conjunction with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2014. Turrell is the recipient of awards including the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1984) and National Medal of Arts (2013).