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James Turrell

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Photography by Timothy Hursley
James Turrell
Photography by Timothy Hursley

James Turrell

born 1943
Biography(b Los Angeles, 6 May 1943).
American installation artist. He studied psychology and mathematics at Pomona College, Claremont, CA (1962–5), and then took a course in fine art at the University of California, Irvine (1965–6). His first projects were carried out at the Mendote Hotel, Ocean Park, CA, which he rented as a studio and exhibition space from 1966 to 1972. Here, using cross-projected halogen lights, Turrell created illuminated geometrical shapes that interacted with the bare interior and with the world outside. In Shallow Space Constructions (1968; exh. New York, Whitney, 1980) he used screened partitions, allowing a radiant effusion of concealed light to create an artificially flattened effect within the given space. In his many subsequent installations Turrell was concerned to revivify the viewer’s perception of the world, using fixed durations of light and colour to convey the experience of ‘touching with sight’. Many of his projects went beyond the confines of galleries and museums. In 1977 he purchased the Roden Crater, an extinct volcano north-east of Flagstaff, AZ. In a most ambitious enterprise, not expected to be completed until the end of the 20th century, Turrell planned to infill the mountain to its original form, leaving a cluster of spaces and walkways within the volcano. Apertures to each compartment were designed to filter various degrees of natural light and to capture the subtle changes of the seasons within a cosmic landscape. ["Turrell, James." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 11, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T086692.]
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