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The
long awaited James Turrell Skyspace, Light Reign,
was unveiled to the public in July of 2003. Since then, it
has been the site of numerous meditation sessions, a Quaker
silent meeting, a performance art piece, an audio installation by artist Steve Roden, and thousands of individual visits. Combining
architecture, sculpture, and atmosphere, the work is not only
a spectacular addition to the museum’s permanent collection,
it is also now an important part of the building's architecture.
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Turrell's
work is meant to be taken in slowly, quietly, and over time.
The Skyspace experience varies at different times of the year
and different times of day. Visitors are encouraged to stop
in again and again to sit back and absorb the effects of the
Skyspace over the course of the seasons.
Visitors
are also encouraged to swing by the Henry Art Gallery after
dark to see the spectrum of intense colors that the exterior
of the Skyspace emits when lit by thousands of computer controlled
LED lights embedded in its glass panels.
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WHO
IS JAMES Turrell?
James Turrell is an internationally acclaimed
light and space artist whose work can be found in collections
worldwide. Since childhood, Turrell has been fascinated with
the qualities of light.
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Turrell’s
mother and grandmother were Quakers. When he was a child growing
up in Pasadena, CA, he remembers his grandmother telling him
what to do at a Quaker meeting: "Go inside and greet
the light." He majored in mathematics and perceptual
psychology at Pomona College, Claremont, CA. He went on to
study art at the University of California at Irvine. A recently
re-lapsed Quaker, Turrell is also a long-time
airplane pilot and rancher.
James
Turrell uses light as his medium. Over more than three decades,
he has created striking works that play with perception and
the effect of light within a created space. |
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Turrell
has said, "My work is about space and the
light that inhabits it. It is about how you confront that space
and plumb it. It is about your seeing."
His large-scale, often architectural works incorporate the complex
interplay of sky, light and atmosphere in motion across expanses
of ocean, desert, and city. Loosely linked to the California
light and space art movement, Turrell is best known for his
monumental land art project at Roden Crater outside Flagstaff,
AZ.
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WHAT
IS A Skyspace?
A James Turrell skyspace is a freestanding enclosed chamber
large enough for about 15 people and designed and constructed
with utmost precision to heighten our sense of sight and perception.
The
Henry Art Gallery Skyspace is the very first to combine two
aspects of James Turrell's work: skyspace and exterior architectural
illumination, making it accessible to viewers from both the
inside and the outside. From the outside,
the elliptical chamber becomes a luminous light work as the
eighteen foot-high glass panels covering its exterior are softly
illuminated from within with slowly changing color.
Inside the skyspace, visitors sit on a bench and view the sky
and atmospheric changes through an opening in the roof. On rainy
days a moveable dome covers the opening and a secondary light
source creates a seemingly infinite visual space beyond the
roof “aperture.” |
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