JAMES TURRELL

Gagosian is pleased to announce Light of the Presence, a pairing of two works from Glass Series (2001–) by James Turrell, opening at the gallery in Athens on April 11. Knowing Light (2007) and Rounded Up (2024) are on view in two separate rooms on the ground floor.

Since the 1960s, Turrell has been exploring perceptual phenomena ranging from sensory deprivation to optical effects. In 1966, he began working with light in his studio in Ocean Park, California, and early works such as Afrum-Proto (1966), which employ planes of light in relation to architectural structures, became the basis for an ongoing manipulation of built and natural environments. Turrell continues to use light as his primary subject and material in formally simple projects that apply new technology to examine the limits of seeing and induce meditative states.

Initially incorporating neon into the works in Glass Series, Turrell has, over the past fifteen years, turned to computer-programmed LED panel technology, which allows for richer hues and lower light levels. (He first utilised the technique in projects for buildings such as the Zug railway station in Switzerland and PSA Peugeot Citroën Design Center outside Paris.) Among the other works in Glass Series is Aurora B: Tall Glass (2010), a large, rectangular-format piece in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Knowing Light and Rounded Up feature planes of light seen through geometrically shaped apertures. Changing colour over an extended period, these surfaces generate alternating impressions of flatness and depth, toying with our perception of space and extending its psychological reverberation. Each shape’s illumination spreads from its centre and occasionally resolves itself into a single, flat hue. A small gap between each work’s glass frontage and the gallery wall into which it is set contributes physical dimensionality and ensures that the tint also radiates out into the environing space, altering viewers’ experience of the entire interior.

Glass Series resonates with Roden Crater, a vast artwork that reconceives the landscape of the Painted Desert region of Northern Arizona as a controlled environment for the contemplation of the light and space of the sky. Built within a volcanic cinder cone,Roden Crater represents the culmination of the artist’s lifelong research in the field of human visual and psychological perception_. _Fundraising is underway to complete the work’s construction and open it to the public.

Press release courtesy Gagosian