"It’s about perception. For me, it’s using light as a material to influence or affect the medium of perception. I feel that I want to use light as this wonderful and magic elixir that we drink as Vitamin D through the skin—and I mean, we are literally light-eaters—to then affect the way that we see. We live within this reality we create, and we’re quite unaware of how we create that reality. So the work is often a general [story] into how we go about forming this world in which we live, in particular by seeing."
-James Turrell
James Turrell (b. 1943) is synonymous with the Light and Space movement which originated in southern California, where the artist resides. Turrell typically creates his installations in enclosed spaces with an aperture on the ceiling that opens up to projected light, sky, and celestial bodies. Suite from Aten Reign is based on James Turrell’s 2013 Aten Reign installation at the Guggenheim Museum— a centerpiece that reimagined the rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic building as a luminous and immersive skyscape. This print captures the artist’s typical sense of light and color and beautifully represents a three- dimensional installation on a two-dimensional plane.
The artist studied at the University of California, Irvine, before attending the art and technology program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. There, he worked alongside fellow light artist Robert Irwin and honed his now-signature process and aesthetic. Turrell’s work has been shown in institutions around the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Museo Jumex, among others. Since the 1970s, Turrell has been working on a celestial light observatory at the Roden Crater in Arizona.
