Manipulating light as a sculptor would mold clay, James Turrell creates works that amplify perception. Unlike pictorial art that replicates visual experience through mimetic illusion, Turrell’s light works—one cannot call these shimmering events ”objects“ or ”images“—give form to perception. Each installation activates a heightened sensory awareness that promotes discovery: what seems to be a lustrous, suspended cube is actually the conjunction of two flat panels of projected light; a rectangle of radiant color hovering in front of a wall is really a deep, illuminated depression in the space; a velvety black square on the ceiling is, in reality, a portal to the night sky. With such effects, Turrell hopes to coax the viewer into a state of self-reflexivity in which one can see oneself seeing.

Turrell has consistently utilized the sparest formal means to perpetuate the consciousness of perception. As demonstrated by the projected geometric ”cube“ of Afrum I, in which light creates the illusion of volume, the artist’s work derives its power from simplicity. Turrell’s early inquiries into the psychological implications of perception involved sensory deprivation. In 1968 he participated in the Art & Technology program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. With scientist Edward Wortz, who was investigating the perceptual alterations encountered in space travel, he studied the visual indeterminacy of the Ganzfeld—an optical phenomenon in which there is nothing for the eye to focus on—with the goal of observing his own retinal activity.

Such phenomena are manifest in works involving structural cuts into existing architecture that allow outside light to penetrate and inhabit interior realms. Lunette is an opening to the sky at the end of a barrel-vaulted hall flanked by hidden fluorescent lights that accentuate the nuanced tones of dawn and dusk. This and all of Turrell’s skyspaces hark back to ancient building techniques that deployed natural light—and the cycles of the cosmos—to create symbolic architecture. In other spatial interventions, such as Night Passage, Turrell uses wall partitions with rectangular windows opening onto contiguous areas filled with pure, colored light. Standing in what Turrell has called the ”sensing space,“ the viewer encounters a Ganzfeld, the volume of colored light on the other side of the partition collapsing into what appears to be a floating, luminous plane with no surface or depth. The illusion is destabilizing yet mesmerizing; it is a tangible example of the artist’s endeavor to produce sensations that are essentially prelingual, to create a transformative experience of wordless thought.

Purchased from Heiner Friedrich, New York, by Panza in 1974; gifted to Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1992.

Solo
Pasadena Art Museum, Jim Turrell, September 9–October 9, 1967. Brochure with essay by John Coplans; unpag. (illus.).

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Jim Turrell, April 9–May 23, 1976. Catalogue, unpag. (illus.).

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, James Turrell: Light and Space, October 20, 1980–January 1, 1981. Catalogue (1981) with essay by Melinda Wortz; p. 14 (illus.).

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, James Turrell, November 13, 1985–February 9, 1986. Catalogue edited by Julia Brown, Occluded Front: James Turrell (Los Angeles: Fellows of Contemporary Art and Lapis Press, 1985), with interview by Brown and essays by Edy de Wilde, Guiseppe Panza di Biumo, John Coplans (reprinted from the Pasadena Art Museum’s exhibition brochure Jim Turrell, 1967), Craig Hodgetts, Craig Adcock, and Jim Simmerman, p. 93, n. 1.

Group
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Venezia/Venice: California Art from the Panza Collection at the Guggenheim Museum, September 2, 2000–January 1, 2001.

In many instances, reproductions of an earlier version of the work, entitled Afrum-proto, have been published as Afrum I.

Adcock, Craig. Mapping Spaces: A Topological Survey of the Work by James Turrell. Basel: Kunsthalle Basel in association with Peter Blum Edition, New York, 1987. Introduction by Jean-Christophe Amman and essays by Adcock, E.C. Krupp, and Mario Diacono; p. 17.

———. James Turrell (exh. cat.). Tallahassee: Florida State University Gallery and Museum, 1989, p. 14 (illus.).

———. James Turrell: The Art of Light and Space. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990, pp. 8, 13, 15, 19, 28, 99.

———. “Light and Space at the Mendota Hotel: The Early Work of James Turrell.” Arts Magazine (New York) 61, no. 7 (March 1987), pp. 48, 50 (illus.).

———. “Perceptual Edges: The Psychology of James Turrell’s Light and Space.” Arts Magazine (New York) 59, no. 6 (February 1985), pp. 124 (illus.), 126.

Baker, Kenneth. “Playing Around with Illusion and Reality.” December 26, 1985. Otherwise unidentified article in Artist’s File, The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York.

Butterfield, Jan. The Art of Light and Space. New York: Abbeville Press, 1993, p. 72 (illus.).

Celant, Germano. Das Bild einer Geschichte 1956/1976, p. 329 (illus.).

Coplans, John. “James Turrell: Projected Light Images.” Artforum (New York) 6, no. 2 (October 1967), p. 48 (illus.).

Failing, Patricia. “James Turrell’s New Light on the Universe.” Art News (New York) 85, no. 4 (April 1985), p. 75 (illus.).

Gilbert, Rita, and William McCarter. Living with Art. 2d ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988, pp. 302 (illus.), 303. (First edition appears under McCarter.)

Hart, Claudia. “Environments of Light: Ornament in Search of Architecture.” ID (New York) 31, no. 2 (March/April 1984), pp. 22 (illus.), 26.

Kazanjina, Dodie. “Art.” Vogue (New York) 181, no. 5 (May 1991), p. 168 (illus.).

Knight, Christopher. Art of the Sixties and Seventies, pp. 243 (illus.), 270. Revised and expanded English edition: pp. 283 (illus.), 312. French edition: pp. 243 (illus.), 270. Italian edition: pp. 243 (illus.), 270. Revised and expanded Italian edition: pp. 283 (illus.), 312.

Levin, Kim. “James Turrell.” Arts Magazine (New York) 55, no. 4 (December 1980), p. 5 (illus.).

Marmer, Nancy. “James Turrell: The Art of Deception.” Art in America (New York) 65, no. 5 (May 1981), p. 91 (illus.).

Marshall, Richard. Immaterial/Objects: Works from the Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1991, p. 127 (illus.).

McCarter, William, and Rita Gilbert. Living with Art. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985, p. 285 (illus.).

Spector, Nancy, ed. Guggenheim Museum Collection: A to Z. 2d ed. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2001, p. 336, 337 (illus.).

Von Maier, Kurt. “Los Angeles.” Art International (Lugano) 10, no. 9 (November 1967), p. 57 (illus.).