#TheLIST: Inspiring books for summer
Wherever your vacation takes you, Lumino shares with you the summer books you need to pack.
Book #2 James Turrell
Known internationally for his mesmerizing light installations, James Turrell has investigated the ways we perceive light, colour and space for over forty years. His meditative works encourage a state of reflexive vision, in which one apprehends the function of one’s own senses and the materiality of light. For the artist’s first exhibition in a New York museum since 1980, Turrell will offer such an experience through a major site-specific project for the Guggenheim, giving shape to the air and light that occupy the museum’s central void. Organized in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, James Turrell comprises one third of a major retrospective exhibition spanning the United States during summer 2013. In addition to an extensive plates section featuring Turrell’s early works, his magnum opus Roden Crater (1976– ), renderings for his installation for the Guggenheim rotunda, and photographs of the installation, this exhibition catalogue will include three essays.
The catalogue produced at the Guggenheim situates ‘Aten Reign’ (2013), an installation created specifically for the museum, in the context of Turrell’s previous works, while an entire section is devoted to Roden Crater, Turrell’s naked-eye observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., a Land art project perpetually in progress.—Editors “Art in America “
About James Turrell
“My work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing. I’m also interested in the sense of presence of space; that is space where you feel a presence, almost an entity — that physical feeling and power that space can give.” Turrell’s medium is pure light. He says, “My work has no object, no image and no focus. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking. What is important to me is to create an experience of wordless thought.
About his latest work
Roden crater, located in the painted desert region of northern arizona, is an unprecedented large-scale artwork created within a volcanic cinder cone. The artist’s lifelong research in the field of human visual and psychological perception, culminated into roden crater, with special engineered spaces where the cycles of geologic and celestial time can be directly experienced. A controlled environment for the contemplation of light. It takes its place within the tradition of american landscape art that began in the 1960s, requiring a journey to visit the work in the remote desert with truly dark night skies.
Discover more about James Turrell:
About the Book: Carmen Giménez (Text), Nat Trotman (Text), Arthur Zajonc (Text), James Turrell (Illustrations)
Published September 30th 2013 by Guggenheim Museum (first published August 31st 2013)
ISBN 0892074884 (ISBN13: 9780892074884)
