James Turrell

This vibrant rectangle (above), a field of luminous scarlet pierced with violet and yellow-white lines, evokes the smooth, two-dimensional surface of the great Colour Field painter such as Barnett Newman or Mark Rothko. Its eerie beauty, however, is not achieved with paint on canvas. Rather, is it an effect of coloured light projected into three-dimensional space, creating chromatic depth and volume. Turrell had been dazzling viewers with his optically challenging light projections since the late 1960s, when he and the artist Robert Irwin founded the Los Angeles "Light and Space" movement. Turrell's installations challenged conventional notions of physical space, transforming perception itself into a medium.



"My work is as much about your seeing as it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing"