Simplicity, The art of the light

James Turrell - Barbara Gladstone Gallery, NYC

Exhibition review by Shirley Shor, 1998

"The Wedge work piece 'Cross-Cut' has a very fragile floor. Do not under any circumstances walk forward beyond the yellow light. There is an alarm to alert you that you have come too close. Please follow the taped line through the dark entryway. There is a bench at the rear of the space. Your eyes will adjust to darkness in a few minutes."

This sign is hung on the entry wall. Admit it, it sounds a little scurry, after all, most of us come to a gallery not to a crime scene. So, I carefully tip-toed into the chamber... After three steps in total darkness, an impressive space appeared in front of me.

A hazy corridor in shiny pink hues creates a meditative ambient atmosphere. The corridor looks very deep and fuzzy as if it tunnels into the horizon, without an apparent ending. However, the viewers are not allowed to expose the light secret, the illusion, by stepping into it. Yellow light stripes block your movement forward. They function as if they were fencing a crime scene. The impression this leaves on the viewer is shifting between confusion and astonishment.

You can experience the gap between what your eyes really see and what your mind thinks you see. "My works don't illustrate scientific principle, but I want them to express a certain consciousness, a certain knowing." Turrell plays and works with natural and artificial light in interesting and unique ways.

For him, light is more than just as a material to create light sculptures with. He uses it to produce the space itself. The sculpture is perceived as real or virtual but the experience is quite tangible.

Technically, the work is made out of two opposing parallel walls, one shorter than the other and a color florescent light source that is located on the opposite side of the shorter wall, concealed from the viewer sight. The light passes across the viewing space from the leading edge of the short wall at an angle toward the opposite corner.

In this work, the light assumes several rolls; it re-divides, cuts, maps, and marks the site. It opens a wide place in space but in doing so, it does not fixate the space. The light walls look infinitely condensed but at the same time, they seem to be penetrable to touch. My eyes adjusted to the darkness as promised in the work synopsis but the illusion persisted. It is immune to the passing of time. So, is it real? Where can we find more virtual places like this in everyday life?

The 'Magnatron Television' piece contains a wall with two television sinks and two armchairs. After sitting on one of the armchairs, in front of one of the TV screens for a while, you suddenly figure out that it is nothing but an aperture in the wall. Again, it is all about light, There is no object in Turrell's art, only a scenery that contains and encapsulates light. The artist has figured out how to balance the colors and the intensity of light to make it look flat like a TV screen. We can call it simulation: An aperture mimicking the gentle curves of a television screen is cut into the partition dividing the space. The subtle color modulation and the benign shape of the screen seem at odd with this intrusive medium, reversing the usually passive experience of the television viewer. The work seduces you to approach, to reduce the distance between you and your television. It tempts you to touch and insert your hands into the wall. It is so natural for any TV browser to refuse to believe that there is nothing out there...

By using light, Turrell illustrates the dialectical materialistic relationship between the Bulk and the Empty, between the Real and the Virtual. He creates bulks - places without fillings, without objects. The white wall is punched with two empty holes. Nothing exists beyond this virtual screen. The real TV set as an empty illusion box.

Turrell's work demonstrates how virtual spaces function as physical places and how real spaces function as virtual ones. It deals with the relationship between those two forms of existence.