James Turrell - Light Artist, Minimalist and Installation Artist
Movements and Styles: Light and Space, Minimalist Art, Conceptual Art
Born: 6 May, 1943 - Los Angeles, California, US
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.
James Turrell works with light and space to create artworks that engage viewers with the limits and wonder of human perception. New Yorker critic Calvin Tompkins writes, His work is not about light, or a record of light; it is light — the physical presence of light made manifest in sensory form.
Informed by his training in perceptual psychology and a childhood fascination with light, Turrell began experimenting with light as a medium in southern California in the mid-1960’s. The Pasadena Art Museum mounted a one-man show of his Projection Pieces, created with high-intensity projectors and precisely modified spaces, in 1967. Mendota Stoppages, a series of light works created and exhibited in his Santa Monica studio, paired Projection Pieces with structural cuts in the building, creating apertures open to the light outside. These investigations aligning and mixing interior and exterior, formed the groundwork for the open sky spaces found in his later Skyspace, Tunnel and Crater artworks.
I am interest in Turrell's training and experimentation in perceptual psychology through his light installations including this regular reference to Parable of Plato’s Cave (see below). He uses this as an introduce 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.
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.
Within Without Exterior
Milk Run, 1996
Tewlwolow Kernow, Mike Newman
Insights of the Parable of Plato’s Cave
Book VII of The Republic by Plato
This is an illustration to show the idea of ignorance. Sitting on the lower grounds are 6 men who are chained. They are unable to move a muscle and all they can see is the shadow casted in front of them.
On the upper ground, there is a fire illuminating the entire cave. In between the fire and the men is a pathway where people can walk. When there this happens, a shadow is casted right in front of the six men and this can lead to many assumptions for the men on what is actually behind them. Because they cannot actually see that is behind them, they can only assume based on the shadows. This process distort their perception on what exist, playing and manipulating their perspectives.
In James Turrell’s work, where he played with light (just like in Plato’s Cave), he stated ‘My work has no object, no image and no focus. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you look at? You are looking at you looking. What is important to me is to create an experience of wordless thought’. www.ossarchive.adm.ntu.edu.sg
Image: http://factmyth.com/platos-allegory-of-the-cave-and-theory-of-the-forms-explained/