James Turrell Essay

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James Turrell

James Turrell is undoubtedly a great artist, but a discerning scientist as well. He transfers his observations and researches based on studies as a perceptual psychology and a psychology of official perception to a world of art. His favorite material is a light, which is a main subject of majority of his works. Using the light as a source of artistic experiences, James Turrell pays our attention to a meaning of light, about which a modern human does not remember. Formerly the light was identified with gods, was a source of life fully determining a rhythm of day. Now the man imprisonment the light and made it generally widespread, is surrounded by it and, therefore, stops to notice it. James Turrell in his works as Projection Pieces shows the light as an exhibit; in Ganzfeld Pieces he fulfills a room with colors and lights changing it into surprising, magical space, in which people seem to be lost and confused seeing a four-walls’ space in, literally, the new light. James Turrell is conscious of human as a part of universe firmly associated with a nature. It is evident in works as Skyspaces, Roden Crater Project or Shaping the Sky. He shows us not only surprising properties of eye, but also brings us closer to the cosmos. Not without significance is an aesthetic of architecture that is a background for his works. It is very minimalistic, ascetic and symmetrical that highlights compatibility and unity of man and the nature (for example The Turrell Skyspace at Rice University). Obviously, James Turrell’s art is not a simply entertainment, but most of all a chance to see a world from a different perspective and to become aware of existing an another way of perception. Nevertheless, it is not a kind of art easily accessible and his great works, placed on a desert, are for real searcher of artistic and, in my opinion, metaphysical

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