Turrell's Orca (Blue + Red)

 

Barrett Barrera Projects announced the installation of James Turrell’s Orca (Blue and Red) at projects+exhibitions at 4568 Manchester Avenue in St. Louis, MO opened to the public on March 13, 2021. Turell (b. 1943 in LA) is quoted on his website: “My work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing. I’m also interested in the sense of presence of space; that is space where you feel a presence, almost an entity — that physical feeling and power that space can give.” The promotional material for this exhibition includes the following observation and quote: Turrell’s medium is pure light. He says, “My work has no object, no image and no focus. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking. What is important to me is to create an experience of wordless thought.”

Wordless thought - I love that. It seems the artist is not about to tell the audience how to think or feel about his work any more that is he willing to articulate an answer to pedantic questions like “What is it?” One could wager that the artist was a thoughtful student at Pasadena High School (Graduated 1961) and became a more profound thinker studying Psychology at Pomona College (BA 1965). Furthermore, he refined his sense of self as a student of Art Graduate Studies at University of California, Irvine (1965-1966) and Claremont Graduate School (MA Art, 1973).

Beginning his art career in the 1960s, Turrell’s work is primarily an exploration of light and space. By making light the subject of the revelation, his work challenges the very nature of how and what is perceived and, in particular, how what is perceived affects and forms the reality lived. One part meditative and another confounding, Turrell’s works heighten the viewer’s very sense of seeing and places the viewer in a realm of experience.

I first experienced Turrell via his skyspace structure at Crystal Bridges in 2012. I encountered him again in an installation in a museum space that astounded me as a I walked into a gallery space that at first appeared to have a large flat composition on a wall. (As it turned out it wasn’t a 2-D composition or a flat wall at all.) The skyspace at Crystal Bridges was a happening for me with a group of fellow docents from the Saint Louis’ Laumeier Sculpture Park. It was pure mindfulness to sit gazing at the sky as the dawn’s light evolved at morning. Turrell is the perfect antidote for those who want to be present and live in the moment.

Meanwhile, a monumental project at Roden Crater, an extinct volcano in Northern Arizona is an unprecedented large-scale artwork created by Turrell that seems a worthy addition to my art bucket list.