James Turrell
Sooner Than Later, Roden Crater
May 25–July 20, 2013
Kayne Griffin Corcoran
2902 Nebraska Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Kayne Griffin Corcoran is pleased to present an exhibition of work by acclaimed artist James Turrell curated by Richard Andrews. The exhibition will include drawings, photographs and models, as well as notes, tools, and architectural plans that chart the evolution of Turrell’s vision for the Roden Crater project over four decades. The exhibition will also include a Meditation Room, an immersive environment from his “Perceptual Cells” series.
This will be the inaugural exhibition in the gallery’s new space in Los Angeles. The 15,000 square foot space at 1201 South La Brea is being renovated by Los Angeles-based architect firm Standard and features key elements designed by James Turrell such as a permanent Skyspace and lighting scheme throughout the galleries and courtyard.
James Turrell believes human perception to be his true medium; in his words, “My art is about your seeing.” His investigation into this field has extended well beyond the walls of the world’s foremost galleries and museums. Since 1972 Turrell has been transforming Roden Crater, a natural volcano located in northern Arizona, into a monumental work of art, astronomy, architecture and engineering. Like Stonehenge, Jaipur, and other naked eye observatories of civilizations past, Roden Crater is built to reveal and enhance celestial phenomena. The completed and planned construction includes a linked complex of interior and exterior spaces that hold the direct and reflected light of the sun, moon and stars in such a way as to heighten perception and increase attentiveness to the connection between interior and exterior worlds, the individual and the infinite.
Turrell developed the “Perceptual Cells” series, as he has said, “to convey the joy of discovery about light that I experienced in the psychology of perception.” The Meditation Room (2013) is a fully immersive environment demonstrating the strong psychological effects of both light and sound. Accommodating two people at a time, visitors lie down in a spherically-shaped room and are exposed to changing sequences of phased and strobed light for fifteen minutes. The experience becomes physical as the light-sensitive areas of the skin are activated, resulting in a heightened perception of color and light intensity.
In 2013, a jointly planned trio of large-scale exhibitions of Turrell’s work will open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (May), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (June), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (June). Since his first solo exhibitions at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1967 and the Stedelijk in 1976, Turrell has been the subject of over 140 solo exhibitions worldwide. Turrell has received numerous awards in the arts, including The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1984.
Richard Andrews is president of the Skystone Foundation, the organization responsible for the realization of the Roden Crater project. He was previously the Director of the University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery for two decades. Prior to that position, Andrews was Director of the Visual Arts Program at the National Endowment for the Arts for three years and in charge of the public art program at the Seattle Arts Commission from 1978 to 1984.
For additional information, please call 310 586 6886 or email info [at] kaynegriffincorcoran.com.
