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James Turrell: A Retrospective – LACMA 2013

James Turrell - LACMA

(Left) James Turrell, Afrum (White), 1966, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, partialgift of Marc and Andrea Glimcher in honor of the appointment of Michael Govan as ChiefExecutive Officer and Wallis Annenberg Director and purchased with funds provided byDavid Bohnett and Tom Gregory through the 2008 Collectors Committee, M.2008.60,© James Turrell, Photo © 2013 Museum Associates/LACMA

(Center) James Turrell, Bridget’s Bardo, 2009, Ganzfeld, Installation view atKunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, 2009, © James Turrell, Photo © Florian Holzherr

James Turrell at LACMA.

James Turrell: A Retrospective – LACMA 2013 The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents ‘James Turrell: A Retrospective’, the first major U.S. survey of Los Angeles-native James Turrell since 1985. May 26, 2013 — April 6, 2014.]]>

Source: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

The exhibition features approximately fifty works tracing five decades of the artist’s career. Inaddition to early light projections, holograms, and an entire sectiondevoted to his masterwork-in-progress, the Roden Crater project, theexhibition features numerous immersive light installations that addressour perception and how we see.

In the mid-1960s, James Turrell was inspired by a beam of light from aslide projector while sitting in the darkened room of an undergraduate arthistory class at Pomona College. The sight provoked a question: what iflight wasn’t the tool that enabled people to see something else but ratherbecame the thing people look at? Thus began an inquiry that has led to avast, prolific career.

“James Turrell: A Retrospective” comprises works that range in scale from anintimate watercolor made in 1969 to a 5,000-square-foot “Ganzfeld”installation—designed to entirely eliminate the viewer’s depth perception—offering visitors multiple entry points into Turrell’s practice. Evidentin the array of works is the artist’s interest in perception, psychology,religion, astronomy, meditation, and science.

The exhibition also draws connections between the artist’s lightinstallations, architectural projects, and his famous masterwork-inprogressat Roden Crater, in the high desert of Arizona. James Turrell: ARetrospective presents the most expansive installation of Roden Craterworks shown to date, presented in the form of models, drawings,photographs, holograms, and other documents from the 1980s through thepresent.

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James Turrell: A Retrospective - LACMA 2013