"My work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing." –James Turrell
For more than 50 years, James Turrell has devoted himself to the treatment of immateriality, materiality and perception, making light a sensual and spiritual experience. Turrell floods rooms with light that is experienced as gentle seas of color or as an intensely glowing fog, taking observers to the very limits of their perception. Turrell eliminates the possibility of orienting one's location by means of an object or spatial limits. The artist himself constantly emphasizes that his work is best described as "perceptual art."
This comprehensive volume, published for the artist's exhibition at Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, Germany, combines key works from Turrell's various phases. Among the works included are Sloan Red, one of his early projections in which geometric light objects appear to float in space. A piece from 2016, from the important series of Wedgeworks, shows how the artist creates illusionist spatial situations using light. The "ganzfeld" experiment Apani, which attracted much attention at the Venice Biennale in 2011, allows the visitor to experience how all imaginable spatial contours can be made to dissolve in light and color. Turrell's famous long-term project Roden Crater—an extinct volcano in the Arizona desert, which the artist has been converting into a kind of observatory since the 1970s—is also represented here, alongside artworks created especially for the Museum Frieder Burda.
As an undergraduate, James Turrell (born 1943) studied psychology and mathematics, transitioning to art only at MFA level. A practicing Quaker, he has described one of his earliest memories: his grandmother inviting him to “go inside and greet the light” at Quaker meetings. The recipient of several prestigious awards, including Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships, Turrell lives in Arizona.
Featured image is reproduced from James Turrell: Extraordinary Ideas—Realized.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Aesthetica
Bold, immersive images of the artist’s visionary installations. Tracking his career from the 1960s onwards, the book reveals how Turrell’s engagement with light, space and colour have altered the way we perceive the world.
Wall Street Journal
Lance Esplund
The real beauty of this book, with its stunning photographs and rainbow-color-tinted pages, is that you get to take a piece of Mr. Turrell’s magic home with you.
Wall Street Journal
The real beauty of this book, with its stunning photographs and rainbow-color-tinted pages, is that you get to take a piece of Mr. Turrell's magic home with you.
Bookforum
Albert Mobilio
Turrell's meticulously engineered environments transform light into a palpable object. Light is felt as wind or heat might befelt; and space, when experienced as indefinite, paradoxically presses close and evelops the body. Extraordinary Ideas can't provide that extraordinary sensation, but it does remind us that light, as Turrell puts it, 'is a powerful substance.'
New York Magazine
Sandro Kereselidze
"a beautiful compilation of key works" Featured in New York Magazine'sThe 20 Best Coffee-Table Books to Give, According to Art People
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
"Light is a powerful substance. We have a primal connection to it. But, for something so powerful, situations for its felt presence are fragile. I form it as much as the material allows. I like to work with it so that you feel it physically, so you feel the presence of light inhabiting a space. I like the quality of feeling that is felt not only with the eyes. It's always a little bit suspect to look at something really beautiful like an experience in nature and want to make it into art. My desire is to set up a situation to which I take you and let you see. It becomes your experience." —James Turrell, from Extraordinary Ideas—Realized. Featured image is SKYLIGHT Aten Reign, 2013, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. continue to blog
James Turrell's 2012 SKYSPACE, Twilight Epiphany (installed at Rice University in Houston, TX), is reproduced from James Turrell: Extraordinary Ideas—Realized, the remarkable new retrospective exhibition catalogue from Hatje Cantz. Deluxe papers, beautiful stamping on the cover and rainbow tinted edges befit this comprehensive overview on the Light and Space master whose work is at once subtle and ephemeral, yet overwhelming and mind-altering. In a published conversation with astronomer E.C. Krupp, Turrell says, "Generally we use light to reveal something about something. I didn't want something to be revealed, I wanted the light itself to be the revelation… I am also interested in light seen with the eyes shut. What does this mean? Well, you dream without your eyes open, but you have full vision, sometimes with greater clarity, resolution, and lushness of color. So I wanted to have something that looked like that, like light you saw in a dream, but with your eyes open." continue to blog
"The light and space installations of James Turrell are intangible and elusive," Lance Esplund writes in the Wall Street Journal Holiday Gift Book Guide, "their experience akin to being immersed in a Rothko painting. Mr. Turrell, who is interested in what he calls 'the thingness, the physicality, of light itself,' shapes natural and artificial light into abstract volumetric illusions. He cuts apertures into ceilings, geometric frames of sky through which you can gaze at passing clouds and stars. His work generally does not translate well into photography—that is, until now… The real beauty of this book, with its stunning photographs and rainbow-color-tinted pages, is that you get to take a piece of Mr. Turrell’s magic home with you." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.5 x 11 in. / 208 pgs / 150 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $85.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $112.5 ISBN: 9783775744843 PUBLISHER: Hatje Cantz AVAILABLE: 8/28/2018 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: NA LA
"My work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing." –James Turrell
For more than 50 years, James Turrell has devoted himself to the treatment of immateriality, materiality and perception, making light a sensual and spiritual experience. Turrell floods rooms with light that is experienced as gentle seas of color or as an intensely glowing fog, taking observers to the very limits of their perception. Turrell eliminates the possibility of orienting one's location by means of an object or spatial limits. The artist himself constantly emphasizes that his work is best described as "perceptual art."
This comprehensive volume, published for the artist's exhibition at Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, Germany, combines key works from Turrell's various phases. Among the works included are Sloan Red, one of his early projections in which geometric light objects appear to float in space. A piece from 2016, from the important series of Wedgeworks, shows how the artist creates illusionist spatial situations using light. The "ganzfeld" experiment Apani, which attracted much attention at the Venice Biennale in 2011, allows the visitor to experience how all imaginable spatial contours can be made to dissolve in light and color. Turrell's famous long-term project Roden Crater—an extinct volcano in the Arizona desert, which the artist has been converting into a kind of observatory since the 1970s—is also represented here, alongside artworks created especially for the Museum Frieder Burda.
As an undergraduate, James Turrell (born 1943) studied psychology and mathematics, transitioning to art only at MFA level. A practicing Quaker, he has described one of his earliest memories: his grandmother inviting him to “go inside and greet the light” at Quaker meetings. The recipient of several prestigious awards, including Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships, Turrell lives in Arizona.
