James Turrell

Space and light artist James Turrell is currently featured at LACMA.  The experience was spectacular, interactive and mind altering.  My favorite pieces belong to a category called “Space Division Works”  that began in 1992 to examine the quality of light. Viewers experience an interplay of space, forms and tone in a carefully crafted projection of light. The projections work on visual perceptions and the sense of light as a real physical material. Turrell said, “I love making spaces that change as your looking changes, it’s not quite as if something’s looking back at you, but it’s about something that has a presence equal to yours, because the light inhabiting that space has a ‘thingness’ of its own.”  The effect was wild and unexpected.  One room took on the quality of dense fog in a eerie forest, danger looming with every step, breath constricted.  Another felt like walking on a cloud in heaven, expansive and absolutely serene as if on top of a snowy mountain peak.  The pictures don't come close to capturing the experience.