Pioneering light and space artist James Turrell counts Kanye West, Drake, and Kendall Jenner as fans. His ever-increasing portfolio of Skyspaces dots the globe. On October 14, though, Gagosian will unveil the largest James Turrell show to hit Europe in 25 years at their sprawling Le Bourget gallery, on the outskirts of Paris. Throughout its eight-month run, “At One” will survey the Quaker art star’s transcendental oeuvre, spanning works new and old from various series and mediums, including a few debuts.
James Turrell, (2016). Woodcut etching. © James Turrell. Photo by Peter Baracchi. Courtesy the artist.
Among all of Gagosian’s 19 spaces throughout America, Europe, and Asia, the mega gallery’s spacious single-story concrete exhibition hall in Le Bourget particularly lends itself to spectacles, from Richard Serra’s enveloping steel curves to Takashi Murakami’s oversized visions. For Turrell, the centerpiece of “At One” will be his never-before-seen Ganzfeld, All Clear (2024)—a rounded, all-white immersive pavilion meant to stimulate the ganzfeld effect. Inside, the lack of sensory cues will collapse time and space for viewers, as if “skiing in whiteout conditions, ascending into enveloping clouds while flying, or diving into the void of the deep ocean,” Gagosian’s release reads.
James Turrell, (2010) from the artist’s “Ganzfeld” series. © James Turrell. Photo by Mike Bruce. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.
“Echoes of such experiences occur when space is dissolved ephemerally in the Ganzfeld piece, All Clear,” the gallery added. “This occurs at timed intervals to prevent the disorientation from becoming overwhelming.”
“At One” will also debut Either Or (2024), a new addition to Turrell’s “Wedgework” series—the apotheosis of his interest in the “thingness” of light (which is, in fact, both a wave, and a particle.) Here, projectors create the illusion of tangible objects like floating cubes and suspended walls. Earlier standouts of this series, such as Shanta, Red (1968)—which Turrell created just two years after deeming light his primary medium—will appear in smaller adjacent galleries.
James Turrell, (2024) from the “Glassworks” series. © James Turrell. Photo by Stathis Mamalakis. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.
Turrell’s “Glassworks” series of luminous computer-programmed LED panels will line the hallways between all these spaces. (Kendall Jenner has one one such work.) The selection in “At One” will bridge the aughts through today, including six Glassworks made this year that debuted in Turrell’s smaller exhibition with Gagosian Athens in May. This latest body of encompasses every shape Turrell has used in the series so far. Aquatints and woodcuts from Turrell’s monumental Aten Reign, which the Guggenheim boldly installed in 2014, will also appear along the exhibition’s inter-gallery passageways.
James Turrell, Lap Desk (1990). © James Turrell. Photo by James Turrell Studio. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.
And, because “At One” intends to mark Turrell’s first exhaustive—dare we say “museum quality”—exhibition in Europe in nearly three decades, it wouldn’t be complete without archival materials and some reference to perhaps Turrell’s most famous, formative opus: his still-unfinished land artwork Roden Crater (1976–). Even Kanye West has chipped in to help fund Turrell’s ambitious vision for this Arizona volcano, which has cost him at least two marriages since he began. Blueprints, holograms, models, photographs, a three-dimensional photo viewer, and lap desks related to Turrell’s efforts manifesting Roden Crater will punctuate the show’s disparate components.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
