My Art is about your seeing.
November 18, 2010 3:53 AM   Subscribe

James Turrell works with light. His latest London exhibition Bindu Shards is booked out; which means you miss a mental orgasm. However Simon Collins has some photos.
Follows some more of James Turrell's work : -
Skyspace;
Bridget's Bardot;
A frontal Passage;
A 1999 interview;
James Turrell on flikr;
Previously;
more.
posted by adamvasco (14 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
There was an installation of his in Seattle down in Pioneer Square back in the eighties that was up for years. It was one of the most impressive pieces of artwork that I've ever seen/not seen. Really amazing visual trips with light and shadow. I want a turn in the Bindu Shards!
posted by gigbutt at 4:59 AM on November 18, 2010


There was an exhibition at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin of an artist whose name I shamefully forget, but he had one work which was two large museum rooms completely filled with dense fog and lit by coloured neon lights. In the fog there was nothing but colour. No walls, no floor, nothing but colour that completely filled your vision. Walking through the fog brought shifts of colour because different coloured lights were used in different areas, but there was no form to anything. A universe of pure colour crossed with space. This guy's works sound similar, and I would love to see it.
posted by sixohsix at 5:23 AM on November 18, 2010


His Milk Run is on display at the Hirschhorn in Washington DC until January.

You need to spend 10 minutes in there at least. When I was there far too many people just stumbled in and out, going "Huh?"
posted by carter at 5:43 AM on November 18, 2010


Very cool, thanks for this post.
posted by Daddy-O at 5:52 AM on November 18, 2010


I went and saw a similar piece by Kurt Hentschläger entitled Zee last year in NYC.

Sixohsix, is that what you say maybe?
There was dense fog, some color, but mostly it was the frequency of the flashing lights that triggered the brain's responses.

It was completely unreal, the event billed itself as "hallucinatory"; I went in skeptical but came out completely amazed. I was taken to a completely different place
posted by aloiv2 at 6:21 AM on November 18, 2010


Amusingly, my wife and I got married inside a Turrell piece in Houston.

If you're in Houston, or close, the building is well worth seeing. It's beautiful.
posted by uberchet at 6:58 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]


The Indianapolis Museum of Art has had a very early Turrell in its collection for many years. It's pretty cool.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:58 AM on November 18, 2010


I like the way he sees.
posted by caddis at 7:09 AM on November 18, 2010


Sixohsix, that was Olafur Eliasson with "Innen Stadt Aussen" (video, the fog and light part of the exhibition start at 08:10).

I've been to the "Second Wind" skyspace by Turrell near Vejer de la Frontera in Spain. Incredibly calm and beautiful.

Is there any information where Bindu Shards might be seen after London?
posted by ltl at 7:18 AM on November 18, 2010


Naoshima Island would be worth visiting if all it had were James Turrel's art pieces.

It's pretty awesome either way, though.
posted by azarbayejani at 7:25 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]


Also, James Turrell loves drugs. (Previously)
posted by azarbayejani at 7:27 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]


WANT want want want hard wanting happening here
posted by everichon at 7:36 AM on November 18, 2010


azarbayejani, thanks for the link to that askme story. The Turrell pedestrian tunnel under the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston mentioned there is really lovely -- I make it a point to go there every time I visit my folks in Texas.

Also, the de Young museum in San Francisco has a modest but lovely (and often overlooked, given the way it's buried in the ground -- I would never have run across it if someone hadn't told me about it) Turrell Skyspace piece in their sculpture garden.

As far as I know, both of these are fairly permanent installations, so no need to book time to see them.
posted by treepour at 8:20 AM on November 18, 2010


I just realized that the Washington Post link I posted doesn't talk much about the art houses. I'm going to quote my post on Minimalissimo about his art house with Tadao Ando. The building is called Minami-dera, and the art piece inside is James Turrell's "Darkside of the Moon".

"I saw a few James Turrell pieces while on Naoshima Island in Japan. The pieces were mindblowing. As the article says above they made my perspective on space completely change. Two of the pieces I saw forced your mind to either think that there was something there where there wasn’t, or nothing there, when there was.

SPOILERS:
For example, in his art house with Tadao Ando, you are led into a pitch black room and instructed to sit. You are left there for about 5 minutes, and in those 5 minutes, your eyes begin to adjust to the light and you see faint red lights, and can get a sense for the size of the space. In front of you, it appears there is a red screen. After 5 minutes of sitting in this space, a woman came and told me I could stand up and walk around the room towards the “screen”. She asked what we saw. I said “a red screen”. But was it a red screen? You could keep reaching out to where you thought the screen was, and you would never reach it. He was just playing with your eyes. It was truly amazing."
posted by azarbayejani at 10:00 AM on November 18, 2010


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