James Turrell

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James Turrell (born May 6, 1943 in Los Angeles , California ) is an American land art artist who is best known for his room and light installations .

life and work

Turrell grew up in Los Angeles as the son of a Quaker family in strictly religious circumstances; the family gave up electricity, cars and other amenities. At the age of 16 he obtained a flying license for powered aircraft. A year later, as a staunch pacifist , he refused military service and was sentenced to 22 months in prison. Turrell graduated from Pomona College in Claremont, California with a degree in psychology and mathematics . In 1966 he began to work on "light rooms". In 1968 he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts . An art degree at the Graduate School, Claremont, graduated in 1973.

Turrell lives and works with his third wife, Kyung Lee, in Flagstaff , Arizona and Maryland .

Clearing crater

Satellite image of the Roden Crater

In the 1970s he was flying in search of a suitable site for a primarily underground light installation. In the Arizona desert, near Flagstaff, he finally discovered an extinct volcanic crater with an oval caldera , surrounded by 400 square kilometers of steppe. Turrell then bought the area in 1974 and named it Roden Crater . It became his most famous and most ambitious facility. He transformed the volcanic cone into a light observatory by installing underground rooms, tunnels and shafts, which should allow the viewer to experience the sky and its phenomena, light, sun and stars in a unique way.

Other works

SKY-SPACE Salzburg 2006SKY-SPACE (1) .jpg

With his Skyspaces , Turrell also deals intensively with the relationship between light and space - large rooms in which the viewer can sit down on seating on the walls and where an opening in the ceiling allows a view of the sky. His light tunnels and light projections create shapes that seem to have mass and weight, but consist only of light.

In 2004, the MAK Vienna Museum of Applied Arts hosted the More Light exhibition . Targetti Light Art Collection at the MAK , the content of which is related to the urban environment through Turrell's permanent light installation MAKlite . The installation was brought up to date in 2018 and is now illuminated in 10 instead of the 4 original colors. The Skyspace The other Horizon is located in the MAK branch in Geymüllerschlössel in Vienna's 18th district .

The Skyspace Secondwind was built in 2005 in the Fundación NMAC in Vejer de la Frontera, Spain .

In 2006 the “Celestial Vault” was built in The Hague , the Netherlands, on the initiative of the Stroom Turrells art center. As part of the Salzburg art project , the SKY-SPACE light installation was created on Mönchsberg that same year .

"Vault of Heaven" by James Turrell in The Hague, Kijkduin

In 2009, the Swiss mineral water manufacturer, restaurateur and large-scale winemaker Donald Hess opened a James Turrell Museum with room and light installations in the remote Argentinian highlands .

In 2009, Turrell built another Skyspace at the Center for International Light Art in Unna . This resembles a camera obscura directed towards the sky through which the sky can be observed. The same museum also houses a White Space set up by Turrell as an in-situ installation .

In winter 2009/2010 Turrell presented his largest light installation in a museum to date at the Wolfsburg Art Museum.

Light installation at the Dornier Museum

In Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, the light installation for the main facade of the new Dornier Museum was officially handed over on October 15, 2009 . Turrell designed the lighting concept for the Dornier Foundation which, after sunset, accentuates the translucent facade of the building modeled on an aircraft hangar.

His light installation Above - Between - Below has been on view in the Kunsthalle Bremen since August 2011 .

In the summer of 2013, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art , the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City organized a three-part retrospective covering over 8,500 square meters, both of which were already shown and which were specially designed for the rooms Works designed by these museums have been exhibited.

In July 2015, the renovated chapel in the cemetery of the Dorotheenstädtische and Friedrichswerder parishes in Berlin was reopened with a light installation by James Turrell.

Awards (excerpt)

Movies

  • James Turrell. Passageways. Documentation, France, USA, 2006, 26 min., Script and director: Carine Asscher, production: Center Pompidou , summary , presentation of the Roden Crater project, with video clip
  • James Turrell. Den Himmel auf Erden Reportage, Germany, 2013, 44:06 min., Written and directed: Armin Kratzert , Florian Holzherr , production: BR , first broadcast: November 7, 2013, online video in the ARD media library

literature

  • Hartmut Böhme : Light as a medium of art. About the lack of experience and aesthetic backlighting in technical civilization. Inaugural lecture, November 2, 1994, published by Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin , issue 66, online text (PDF, 43 pages; 249 kB)
  • James Turrell: The Other Horizon. Translated by Brian Holmes. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2001, ISBN 3-7757-9062-4 , MAK exhibition catalog
  • Geometry of light . Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7757-2369-5 (exhibition catalog Lichtkunstzentrum Unna ).
  • Eva Schürmann : Appear and Perceive. A comparative study of the art of James Turrell and the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty . Fink Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-7705-3473-5
  • Ulrike Gehring : Pictures from Light: James Turrell in the Context of American Art after 1945. Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 978-3-936636-82-6
  • Amnon Barzel: Targetti Light Art Collection at MAK Vienna . [Publication on the occasion of the exhibition "More Light. Targetti Light Art Collection at the MAK", MAK Vienna, November 24, 2004 to January 16, 2005, and the opening by James Turrell. MAKlite, permanent outdoor installation on the MAK facade, 2004]. Vienna 2004.
  • Richard Andrews: " James Turrell - The Wolfsburg Project ". (Publication for the exhibition of the same name, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, October 24, 2009 to April 5, 2010). Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2009. ISBN 978-3-7757-2455-5 .
  • Inge Herold: James Turrell, Four Eyes , Kunsthalle Mannheim , Mannheim 2012, ISBN 978-3-89165-218-3 .
  • Wil S. Hylton: How James Turrell Knocked the Art World Off Its Feet - New York Times, June 13, 2013
  • Michael Govan, Christine Y. Kim: James Turrell: A Retrospective . Prestel, 2013.

Web links

Commons : James Turrell  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. Volker Stephan: "Light artist James Turrell: Enlightenment in the darkroom" , WAZ , May 23, 2009.
  2. Guggenheim Collection (biography)
  3. Stefanie Ringel: Magician of Light , Blick , March 3, 2007.
  4. Exhibition review Mehr Licht November 24, 2004 to January 16, 2005 ( Memento of the original from December 28, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and MAKlite light installation ( Memento of the original dated December 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mak.at @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mak.at
  5. James Turrell: MAKlite Reloaded - MAK Museum Vienna. Retrieved June 7, 2019 .
  6. Second Wind - Fundación NMAC. Retrieved February 25, 2020 .
  7. ^ "Pilgrimage to Light" ( Memento from January 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), WDR , June 28, 2009.
  8. James Turrell. The Wolfsburg Project ( Memento of the original from October 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Wolfsburg Art Museum , October 24, 2009 - April 5, 2010 “Strange to wander in the mist of paint” , manager magazin , October 23, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kunstmuseum-wolfsburg.de
      
  9. ^ Dornier Museum Friedrichshafen - shining hangar for daring flight visions .
  10. Press release of the Dornier Museum "Inauguration of the light installation by James Turrell" ( Memento of the original from January 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from October 15, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dorniermuseum.de
  11. Information from the Kunsthalle Bremen  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on August 23, 2011.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.kunsthalle-bremen.de  
  12. On the light bath in the museum spiral in FAZ of July 4, 2013, p. 27.
  13. ^ Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof I: Chapel. Website of the Berlin-Mitte Cemetery Association , accessed on December 18, 2015.
  14. National Medal of Arts 2013: James Turrell , National Endowment for the Arts