James Turrell

The work of a legendary artist for the first time in Nantes

James Turrell, born in Los Angeles in 1943, is above all an artist of space and light, which he explores throughout his career, propelling his work towards a cosmic and spiritual dimension:

Light is the material I use, perception the medium, my work has no subject, perception is the subject (...).

James Turrell

From 1965 onwards, James Turrell studied psychology, mathematics, astronomy, geology and art, then transformed his Santa Monica studio into a veritable experimental laboratory where his first Projection Pieces were born. Light took shape and became a medium in its own right. From then on, James Turrell never ceased to shape light to create "perceptual environments" in rooms or in the open air, destabilizing the viewer's senses and laying new foundations in the history of art.

A sensory dive into the heart of the intangible

To grasp Cherry (1998), the viewer enters a cube through a dark corridor. Immersed in darkness, the eye acclimatizes, then gradually perceives a red rectangle whose color becomes purer and purer, almost hypnotic. Is it a flat monochrome, a volume, a precipice or a screen?
This is the mystery of Turrell's works: at once present and intangible, real and immaterial, they sow doubt in our perception and place the viewer at the heart of a device where time seems suspended.

Another immersive installation in the Tall Glasses series, Awakening (2006) features a darkened room that gives the illusion of a corridor at the end of which a hypnotic light changes color very slowly.

Two sets of works surround the exhibition: one evokes the historic Projection pieces series, with a display of engravings; the other refers to the Roden crater: a volcano acquired by the artist in 1977 to be turned into a monumental work.