“...Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.” – Leonora Carrington
The painterly masterworks of Turner with their sensibility to romantic allusion, the observational watercolour landscapes of Constable, and the courtly compositions of Caravaggio are among an endless ensemble of artists who affirm a deliberate courtship to the manipulation and corporeality of light. It can be declared from a historical context that for these artists, the source of light lay within an institution ascribed to divine principles, for light was the ‘physical’ embodiment of divinity – a phenomenal reminder of god in our earthly realm. This notion is not entirely new, as one can trace this paradigm into impressions of history – from the coloured stained glass of medieval cathedrals, the obelisks of Ancient Egypt in their sanctifying axis to the sun-god Re, and the ziggurats of the Mayans in their ascension to the heavens. Light as a devotional entity, as a corporal object to be perceived rather than experienced plays a paramount role in the oeuvre of artist, James Turrell, a true visionary in the realm of science, mathematics, art and the architecture of light.
The entrance to a James Turrell work is an invitation into another realm. It is in fact otherworldly, meditative and imparts challenges to our conventional senses. There is theatricality in its execution, a dramatic interplay between perception and what is perceived, all of which is filtered through an engineering of light’s properties. One of Turrell’s earliest cross-projected works entitled Afrum (White) 1966 draws focus on his interest in structuring light into an object, drawing into its three-dimensional characteristics. Afrum looms along a darkened space which implies its transparency, although the visual projection conveys a solidity which counteracts this perception. Perception is at the forefront of Turrell’s intent as for him it's about "using light as a material to influence or affect the medium of perception...[and] how we go about forming [the] world in which we live, in particular with seeing.” In this way Afrum (White) feeds into this notion as the use of geometry and light manipulates is voluminous appearance the longer we perceive the work. It is about pushing the boundaries of three dimensional space as perceived, and creating an allusion to a realm beyond this dimension.
Beyond the gallery context there is what I esteem to be the most fascinating of Turrell’s creations – that of his autonomous, architectural structures. Playing on the duality of ancient architectural monuments and modern branches of science, this fusion of the past and present conveys a beautiful understanding of how the past can in fact inform our present. This dialogue is particularly realised in the instance of his celestial architectural skyspace – Within Without (2010). In this skyspace, light embodies a painterly essence whereby the viewer is invited to experience the dramatic evolution between night and day in a chamber-like structure. The interplay between varicoloured light and the natural progression of time is poignantly highlighted by a circular, open, central oculus located at the top of the chamber’s dome. Light is the core medium in which Turrell devises the architecture of the structure, taking into account a time-lapse-like movement with the sky as central spectacle. The square-base pyramid structure itself encompasses a sloping walkway, turquoise water, red ochre walls and a round floor-set moonstone, all in which hamronise the shifting movement of light inside the central dome space. Within Without conveys a visual dialogue between the visible and invisible, whereby architecture relates to the former and light to the latter. There is a meditative beauty in this paradox whereby the reticent nature of light is just “like [a] wordless thought that comes from looking into a fire.” It is this paradox which allows architecture an informed secondary role, as for Turrell structure is fundamentally just a grandiose vessel in its containment of light.
L/R || 1. James Turrell, Afrum White (1966), 2,3,4. James Turrell, Within Without - Details (2010)
© All images - Adwena Shemon