James Turrell: Light and Land
June 21, 2003 - January 4, 2004
The Sonoma County Museum in Santa Rosa has the rare opportunity to feature the work of James Turrell - one of the most celebrated and important living artists of the 20th & 21st century. Jaes Turrell: Light and Land is on view June 21, 2003 through January 4, 2004. The extended duration of the installation will allow this to be a contemplative place to be visited and revisited.
The exhibition features the light piece, Raemar, 1969 which will dominate the entire 1st floor gallery of the Museum. Raemar was last exhibited at the Steel in Amsterdam in 1976. In addition to the Raemar installation, the Museum will devote an adjacent gallery to showcasing prints, models, and images of Roden Crater, James Turrell’s monumental project in the Arizona desert.
Physical Description and Experience
Raemar is a room-sized installation composed of twelve florescent lights behind a screen wall, which is erected in front of bearing wall in the gallery. The viewer enters a small room in which the far wall appears to float in a halo of light. The reflected light from behind the screen wall is visible only along the intersections of the screen wall with the surrounding walls, floor, and ceiling. Thus, the screen wall appears to float in a pool of light. Like all of Turrell’s installation pieces, Raemar plays with the viewer’s visual perception, makes space indefinable, and asks us question how we perceive light and space.
About Roden Crater
In addition to the Raemar installation, documentation of Roden Crater, James Turrell’s monumental project in the Arizona desert bison view in an adjacent gallery. James Turrell’s Roden Crater project will transform a volcanic crater, millions of years in the making, into a large-scale artwork - a celestial observatory influenced by ancient naked-eye observatories as well as the contemporary tradition of land art. Altering the natural form slightly through a series of chambers, pathways, tunnels, and openings to the sky, Roden Crater will provide visual experiences, "disturbing and awakening our understanding of the universe."
About the Artist
James Turrell was born in Los Angeles, California in 1943. He was strongly influenced by his father, an aeronautical engineer withal passion for flying, light and architecture. Turrell earned his pilot's license at age 16 and also learned to rebuild vintage aircraft. Turrell’s mother was a trained medical doctor who taught zoology in the Peace Corps in Africa. His mother and grandmother were both Quakers and he was raised in that tradition.
His interest in light began in childhood. At age six, his grandmother encouraged him "go inside and greet the light" at Quaker meetings. At home, he pricked holes in the shape of constellations in his room's WWII-era blackout curtains in order to see stars during the daytime.
This interest continued and developed at Pomona College, where he majored in mathematics and perceptual psychology, with an emphasis in optics and visual phenomena. Turrell pursued a graduate degree in fine arts at U.C. Irvine and later at Claremont Graduate School. He was inspired in part during slide lectures, realizing that he was more focused on the projector's light beam than the images on the screen.
Turrell began using light itself as his material. In his rented studio in the former Mendota Hotel in Ocean Park, Los Angeles, Turrell sealed off the interior spaces from outside light, soundproofed the ceiling, and painted them white. These ‘shell’ spaces allowed him to explore more complex projections and other experiments with light.
He had his first solo show at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1967. By 1976 he had his first extensive one-man show at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (the last time Raemar was exhibited to the public). Turrell’s light installations, drawings, prints, and models have been exhibited broadly, both nationally and internationally. Numerous books and catalogs of his work have been published in many languages.
After being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974, Turrell flew his plane all across the western United States, in search of site to continue his explorations of light on a monumental scale. He purchased the Roden Crater in 1977 with support from the Dart Foundation. Since that time, he has been engaged in transforming the extinct Roden Crater, part of the San Francisco volcanic plateau, into a large-scale artwork - a celestial observatory influenced by ancient naked-eye observatories as well as the contemporary tradition of Land Art.
In the 1980s he began another career as a rancher in order to secure a bank loan for the project. Proceeds from Walking Crane, his ranch, now contribute to the development of the crater as "Land Art." As he explains in profile about him in The New Yorker,"agriculture is actually subsidizing art. I'm not sure if it’s harder making a living as a rancher or an artist, but I think people behave better in ranching."
Turrell’s commitment to the land - he is both a rancher and an environmentalist, provide an important connection to the Sonoma County Museum’s curatorial emphasis of ‘Where Land Meets Art.’
James Turrell: Light and Land is organized by Natasha Boas, executive director and chief curator, Alexandra Quinn, education curator and Eric Stanley, exhibitions manager.
WHERE LAND MEETS ART exhibition generously supported by Sonne J. Pedersen, the Anorcase Foundation, the LEF Foundation,North Bay Bohemian, The Press Democrat, Tin Man Fund, TLCD Architecture, and Wright Contracting, Inc.
Exploring Space with Light, a series of teacher training workshops and live Webcasts, is a collaboration between the Sonoma County Museum and The Exploratorium associated with this exhibition. The program is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the LEF Foundation, Sonoma County Office of Education, Sonoma County Museum, and the Exploratorium.
A special thank you to Sonoma County collectors Carol Vena-Mondt and Ann Hatch, as well as the Mattress Factory and Steven Chaise.
