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This book contains a complete survey of Turrell’s work with texts by Dr. Craig Adcock, Mario Diacono, Dr. E. C. Krupp and James Turrell. There is an introduction by Dr. Jean-Christophe Ammann. There are many black & white and color photographs, several fold-out pages, and drawings of the Roden Crater project on translucent drafting paper. A separate map is inserted in the back cover. Edition of 1,200

James Turrell works with phenomena of light like no other artist. Since the 1960s he has been building astonishing spaces that allow light to be experienced both in its material and its spiritual qualities. In recent years Turrell has developed an increasing interest in the staging of architecture through the use of light. He has realized several landmark works with this in mind–his light installation for the opening of the Kunsthaus Bregenz, his light design for an administrative building in Leipzig, and the light events on the Pont du Gard, a Roman bridge in Southern France. James Turrell: Lighting a Planet documents his all-inclusive staging of Planet m, including numerous photographs, sketches, interviews, comparative illustrations and an enlightening essay. Planet m is the Bertelsmann pavilion, the secret landmark of the EXPO 2000 at Hanover, which takes on a nocturnal second life through Turrell’s ever-shifting atmospheres of light.

In November 1966, 23-year-old artist James Turrell moved into an old hotel in Ocean Park, California, and immediately set to work sealing off all of its windows and insulating all of the walls. There, in the newly dark and silent space that had once been filled with the constant bustling of travelers, Turrell created his first light projection, “Afrum-Proto.” Essentially, it was a rectangle projected across a corner of a room in such a way that from a distance there appeared to be a solid cube floating off the floor. From there Turrell went on to explore other spatial and perceptual light installations like “skyspaces,” in which rooms open up to reveal planes of the visible open sky above and dark spaces where scarcely any light can be perceived. Of his preoccupation with the phenomenon of light as an artistic medium, Turrell says, “I want to address the light that we see in dreams and the spaces that seem to come from those dreams and which are familiar to those who inhabit those places.” His ethereal installations of radiant light manipulate viewers’ perceptions, rather than present objects for aesthetic contemplation. His artworks are viewing chambers in which the experience of seeing is its own revelation and reward.

Turrell’s work is about the observation of light and the celestial sphere. He has created a site in the dunes of Kijkduin, along the coast of Holland. Sitting on the bench in the centre of a spherical sand-crater, the viewer can experience a segment of Dutch sky and its light, unhindered by objects or architecture on the horizon. Illustrations, essays, and some Turrell inspired poems by the Dutch poet Lucebert provide the accompaniment in this well-designed book.

On the island of Naoshima off the picturesque coast of western Japan, Japanese architect Tadao Ando has built a spectacular structure comprised of basic geometric forms. Situated on cliffs overlooking the straits of Seto-Naikai, the building provides a congenial setting for the presentation of numerous undisputed masterpieces of artistic reduction, including several of Claude Monet’s incomparable Water Lilies, monumental sculptures by Walter de Maria, and meditative light installations by James Turrell. Here, on the island of Naoshima off the picturesque coast of western Japan, the heirs of the publisher Fukutake have realizing posthumously his lifelong dream of an expansive museum environment, a private estate filled with sculptures, installations, Land Art, and artists’ houses. Preface by Nobuko and Soichiro Fukutake. Essays by James Rondeau, Walter de Maria, Hiroyuki Suzuki, Paul Tucker, et al.

In Context: James Turrell, Occluded Front was curated by Julia Brown and featured works in light, space, and perception created between 1967 and 1985. The survey included five major installations with three Projector Pieces and three new pieces commissioned for the Temporary Contemporary space.

Lucio Fontana’s (1899–1968) Ambienti spaziali, or Spatial Environments were immersive installations that include neon crystal tubes, paint that glows under black light and captivating pa-pier-mâché sculptures. Fontana’s use of technology pushed the boundaries of art beyond the canvas to “paint” with light and invite viewers into the physical space of the work itself. In spring 2020 Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles staged the first comprehensive presentation of Ambienti spaziali in the United States, carefully reconstructing the installations as they initially appeared from 1948 to the final years of the artist’s life. This accompanying volume is edited in collaboration with Milan’s Fondazione Lucio Fontana and includes a survey of Fontana’s contributions to the evolution of conceptual art, tracing his influence on other legendary figures as Piero Manzoni, Yayoi Kusama and James Turrell.

Lucido protagonista della “nuova topografia” americana degli anni settanta, artista costantemente impegnato a decostruire la politica dei luoghi e delle rappresentazioni, sin dai suoi esordi Lewis Baltz ha accompagnato alla ricerca visiva una meditata attività di scrittura critica e autocritica. Le riflessioni raccolte in questo volume illuminano da prospettive differenti la sua opera ultraquarantennale e il contesto transatlantico nel quale si è sviluppata: interventi che hanno affiancato le opere topografiche del primo periodo, narrazioni incorporate nei lavori testo-immagine della fine degli anni ottanta, ma anche una corposa serie di saggi dedicati ad alcuni tra i più importanti fotografi e artisti del Novecento. In questi ultimi l’ascolto dell’enigmatica materialità delle opere si fonde con un ragionare secco e disincantato sulla loro adeguatezza culturale e, infine, politica. Rientrano in tale filone gli scritti dedicati a Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Robert Adams, Michael Schmidt, Allan Sekula, Thomas Ruff e Jeff Wall, che in modi diversi interrogano le possibilità e i limiti delle pratiche fotografiche di stampo modernista; in alcuni passi affiorano inoltre circostanziati apprezzamenti di artisti come Krzysztof Wodiczko, Felix Conzàlez-Torres, Barry Le Va, Chris Burden, James Turrell, Robert Irwin, John McLaughlin e Alessandro Laita, con i quali Baltz ha condiviso aspetti cruciali della ricerca e, in diversi casi, della propria biografia…

In una cultura segnata dal virtuale e dal rapido susseguirsi di nuovi media, che posto diamo alla superficie, espressione stessa di una sostanza fisica? Spazio di confine fra mondo interno ed esterno, soglia che separa il visivo dal tattile, la superficie è anche e soprattutto un luogo di relazioni materiali. Per scoprire la materialità delle immagini che popolano il contemporaneo e coglierne la portata, diventa allora indispensabile esplorare lo spazio di tali relazioni e il modo in cui vengono mediate attraverso stipi ilici che assumono di volta in volta le fattezze di una pelle, di un vestito, di uno schermo cinematografico o di una tela, fino ad arrivare ai monitor che dominano il nostro vivere quotidiano. Seguire il filo di questi incontri significa svelare la tessitura che compone il visuale e comprendere che l’immagine non è un mero elemento bidimensionale, ma qualcosa di poroso, un’epidermide che assorbe il tempo, un luogo in cui possono concretizzarsi forme di memoria e di trasformazione, un dispositivo che mette in contatto dimensioni spaziotemporali distanti. Ragionando a fondo sulle relazioni oggettuali tra arte, architettura, moda, design, cinema e nuovi media, Giuliana Bruno si interroga sul concetto di materialità e sulle sue molteplici manifestazioni. Superfici è un magistrale vagabondaggio nella cultura visuale contemporanea, una passeggiata che attraversa gli ambienti luminosi di artisti come Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Tacita Dean e Anthony McCall, tocca le superfici tattili degli schermi cinematografici di Isaac Julien, Sally Potter e Wong Kar-wai e viaggia attraverso la materialità delle pratiche architettoniche di Diller Scoficidio + Renfro e Herzog & de Meuron fino all’arte di Doris Salcedo e Rachel Whiteread, nelle quali la tensione di superficie dei media si tocca con mano. Una dissertazione che riesce a sfatare un mito, che la superficie sia un fatto superficiale.

One-hundred years ago, Einstein solved the elemental mystery of the nature of light: it is both an electromagnetic wave and a stream of particles. It is a form of energy that moves at a speed of 299.792.458 m/s. It is a medium like no other, and nothing has revolutionized and democratized our world in the way that the control of electric light has.~We live in cities and gardens of light. For almost a century, artists have been working with light bulbs, fluorescent and neon, spotlights or LEDs, to cultivate these gardens. Light Art. Artificial Light offers a broad overview of the development of this genre, from the pioneers of light art in the 1920s to the immersive, interactive environments of ZERO, GRAV, Gruppo T and Gruppo N. Outstanding contemporary pieces, fascinating, profound illuminated spheres, ironic cross-references and plays of filigreed light complete this glowing spectrum of work. Featured artists include Vito Acconci, Olafur Eliasson, Tracey Emin, Dan Flavin, Zaha Hadid, Jenny Holzer, Mike Kelley, Julio Le Parc, Mario Merz, László Moholy-Nagy, Bruce Nauman, Jorge Pardo, Tobias Rehberger, Anselm Reyle, Jason Rhoades, Keith Sonnier, Yves Tinguely, James Turrell and Chen Zhen.

Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated) examines the impulse toward reduction, restraint, and lucidity in postwar art. Drawing on the Guggenheim’s exceptional holdings of minimalist painting and singular sculpture, Singular Forms begins with Robert Rauschenberg’s historic White Painting (1951), a stark, monochrome canvas. This seminal work establishes twin trajectories in the development of contemporary art: the elimination of all extraneous details to achieve an art of pure, essential form, and the attention to issues of perception. After a prologue including other examples of radical, monochrome paintings by Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, and Ad Reinhardt, Singular Forms explores how these parallel artistic strategies were manifest in Minimalist and Conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s through the work of Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, and Lawrence Weiner, among others. Minimalism’s impact on subsequent generations of contemporary artists begins with Postminimalism, which utilized the movement’s deliberate paucity of formal means to explore a range of concerns including process, the dematerialization of the object, the performative nature of art, and the structural properties of light. Artists such as Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, James Turrell, and Richard Long are included in this section. What follows are artists schooled in the deconstructivist tendencies of Postmodernism–such as Robert Gober, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Roni Horn–who resuscitated Minimalism as a style, infusing its unitary, nonreferential forms with content to bring to the fore trenchant cultural issues. Singular Forms concludes with recent work that shares the look of classic Minimalist art, but uses it to communicate deeply personal, political, or poetic messages. Also examined is the reach of Minimalism and Conceptualism beyond the visual arts into film, choreography, music, design, and architecture.

This edition brings together a body of 37 recorded conversations made with leading artists from Sir Anthony Caro and Arman to James Turrell and Rachel Whiteread. In considering their work, often in the context of an exhibition, artists discuss their ideas in formation and the factors which have informed their development. Read together, another picture emerges of unexpected links between the makers, in the expression of their concerns, in the work and with the world beyond, that forms a coherent overview of the developing art.

This work investigates the phenomenon of light and space art, which originated in California during the late 1960s and which has become a movement of international significance. The artists included in this coverage are Michael Asher, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Bruce Nauman, Maria Nordman, Eric Orr, Hap Tivey, James Turrell, Dewain Valentine, Susan Kaiser Vogel and Doug Wheeler. The book is based upon more than two decades of research. It is particularly useful because so much of the work discussed and described only existed briefly on specific sites, and a few of them were only seen by a few people at the time. Photographs, interviews and the author’s own observations recreate those works. The book argues that sight is only one of the senses engaged in this art, for many of the installations affect hearing, touch and perception as well as vision. This art form was shaped by many forces including the Southern Californian milieu, the artists’ fascination with science, technology and psychology and their willingness to explore alchemy and metaphysics as readily as art history. The thinking of the artists and their processes of creating the works are often even more intriguing than the final results.

From 1969 to 1973, a series of radical art projects took place at the far eastern edge of Los Angeles County at the Pomona College Museum of Art, in Claremont, California. Here, Hal Glicksman, a pioneering curator in Light and Space art and former assistant to Walter Hopps, and Helene Winer, later the director of Artists Space and founder of Metro Pictures gallery in New York, curated landmark exhibitions by young local artists who bridged the gap between postminimalism and Conceptual art and presaged the development of postminimalism in the late 1970s. Among these artists were Bas Jan Ader, Michael Asher, Mowry Baden, Lewis Baltz, Chris Burden, Judy Chicago, Ger van Elk, Jack Goldstein, Robert Irwin, William Leavitt, John McCracken, Allen Ruppersberg, James Turrell and William Wegman. Providing unprecedented and revelatory insight into the art history of postwar Los Angeles, It Happened at Pomonachronicles the activities of artists, scholars, students and faculty associated with the College during this period. The book provides new insight into the relationship between postminimalism, Light and Space art and various strands of Conceptual art, performance art and photography in California, while contributing substantial new information about interconnections between artistic developments in Los Angeles and New York.