James Turrell

Born in 1943 in Los Angeles, James Turrell is an American artist based in Flagstaff, Arizona. He works primarily in his home there, but also sometimes in Ireland. He studied Psychology at Pomona College and graduated from the University of California in 1966, where he studied Art, and then again from the University of Claremont in 1973. His works make use of space and light, and represent a duality between technical scientific tools and the cultures of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

He is an architect of light and uses space to study the impact of emptiness; blending art with technology and using the newest systems LED systems to create pieces which would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. Influenced by Indian, Japanese, Tibetan, and Hopi culture, he seeks to immerse the spectator in a space where they can, in the artist's own words, 'see themselves in the act of seeing', and experience new sensations. Turrell plays with the human perception of space to explore its limits. He is a veteran pilot and considers the sky to be his workshop: a new form of canvas. Critic Calvin Tompkins described his work as 'light – the physical presence of light – manifested in a sensory form'. 

Guided by his training in psychology and the perception, as well as his own fascination with light, Turrell began to use light as a medium in the 60s. He used the metaphor of Plato's Cave to show that we live in a reality built on our perception, with sensory limits which are normalised by our cultures and contexts. This message is particularly evident in his piece Skyscapes: rooms with high ceilings, punctuated by myriad windows, representing the way we create and perceive colours according to our own version of reality. 

His work is at once artistic but also astronomic. His seminal work was the arrangement of his Roden Crater in the Arizona desert following his 1974 discovery of the crater of an extinct volcano while surveying the region, where he went on to open an observatory to track celestial phenomena. James Turrell also sculpted the dimensions of the crater's basin and divided it into a series of rooms, tunnels, and openings inside the volcano itself in order to offer visitors the chance to improve their perception of light and the earth. Once again, this work is centred on the Turrell's studies of light and his fascination with space. Although this work is still under construction and therefore not open to the public, many of his works are open and accessible for viewing. Agua de Luz, a series of skylights and swimming pools built inside a Yucatan pyramid is open to visitors (although pre-booking is essential) and this is just one of many examples.

James Turrell's technique rests on his use of light as a tool: 'my work does not have a subject, an image, or focus, and without a subject, image, or focus point, what do you see? You see yourself, seeing. That's what's important for me: creating an experience of thoughts without words.' 

Turrell has exhibited his art all over the world and his works form part of the permanent catalogue in many internationally renowned institutions, although he is also often the subject of temporary exhibitions. 

In 2009, he opened his own museum in Argentina in the Salta region, in the Colomé bodega. He also has works in the collections at the Tate Modern in London, The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, the County Gallery in Los Angeles, the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum in New York, the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis, the De Young Museum in San Francisco, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Museum of Contemporary 20th Century Art in Kanazawa, Japan.