NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER COMMISSIONS JAMES TURRELL 'SKYSPACE'
11/22/2002 12:00:00 AM
Dallas, TX, November 22, 2002 - The Nasher Sculpture Center announced today the commissioning of a site-specific work by James Turrell entitled Tending, (Blue) for the new institution in downtown Dallas, scheduled to open in October 2003. Known for his work with natural and colored light, Turrell is recognized as an international leader in the fields of environmental and installation art. His creative use of illumination redefines a viewer's sense of space, the surrounding environment, and the nature of light itself. Turrell's free-standing "skyspace" will be situated at the far end of the Center's sculpture garden, partially submerged in a landscaped berm.
In announcing the commission, Raymond D. Nasher, Dallas collector, philanthropist, and Nasher Sculpture Center founder, praised Turrell as "one of the most exciting and creative artists at work today. He has helped change our concept of sculpture, whether through huge earth works or more intimate installations with magical effects of light and space. This will be our only site-specific work for the Nasher Sculpture Center and will be constructed as part of the infrastructure of the garden. We know it will be a great addition."
In the 1970s, Turrell began a series of works that he describes generically as "skyspaces." These involve enclosed spaces - rooms or free-standing structures - open to the sky through rectangular or rounded holes in the roof. The shapes and sizes of the rooms vary, but they are large enough for viewers to enter and sit on benches. In these quiet and meditative settings, one concentrates on the view of the sky through the aperture in the ceiling. By providing an interior light calculated at a certain color temperature, Turrell conditions the eye in a way that affects one's perception of the sky's color, distance, and density. Especially at sunrise and sunset, when changes in the coloration of the sky are most rapid and pronounced, the resulting experience can be mesmerizing, as the sky seems to take on colors never before noticed and, framed by the knife-edge clarity of the aperture, becomes extremely dense, even flat.
Tending, (Blue) fits into this "skyspace" category. The exterior building is black granite, with limestone benches and white plaster walls inside. The main structure is a cube measuring approximately 26 x 26 x 26 feet externally, and 22 x 22 x 22 feet internally with seating capacity for 20 to 25 people. A smaller entrance room attached at the side of the main structure opens into the garden. Ringing the interior space are smooth stone benches with angled backs allowing visitors to comfortably sit and concentrate on the view out of the 10 x 10 square foot opening in the ceiling. Unlike Terrell's other "skyspaces," Tending, (Blue) is both air conditioned and heated making it comfortable for visitors all year. The benches are protected from the elements by the overhang of the roof. Tending, (Blue) is compliant with the American with Disabilities Act.
Steven Nash, Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center, notes that the commission is a sign of the Center's strong commitment to contemporary art. "There is a very important group of artists who have worked over the past couple of decades with light and projected imagery," Nash points out. "This is the first piece by any of those artists in the Nasher Collection. We believe that Tending, (Blue), because of the beauty of its construction and the different nature of the visual and sensual experience it will offer, will be one of Turrell's finest works. Painters before him such as Turner and Rothko understood the transporting powers of light. Turrell actually puts us into the light, in ways that inspire, intrigue, and delight."
As is typical of Turrell's "skyspaces," the interior lighting is critical to the perceptions of external light and sky. In Tending, (Blue), Turrell is experimenting with a more complex lighting scheme. Whereas he has traditionally installed a single or double row of neon tubing for illuminating the interior, in this case he is considering the use of the more modern technology of light emitting diodes (LED) lights. He will place two lines of LED nodules behind the upper edge of the bench backs (so the light source is concealed). The double row of lights provides a greater range of color temperatures, and the LED lights are both brighter and quieter than neon, giving viewers a more varied experience of color, density, translucency, and depth as they concentrate from inside on the changing conditions of sky and atmosphere. Another unique aspect of the design of Tending, (Blue) is a separate light program in the entrance chamber.
James Turrell has figured prominently in international art developments for more than three decades, due to his pioneering work in fields as diverse as installation art, earth works, and architectural projects. Turrell was born in Los Angeles in 1943 and attended Pomona College where he studied mathematics, psychology, and art history before pursuing graduate studies in fine arts at the University of California at Irvine and Claremont Graduate School. He began working with light in the mid-1960s at a time when the so-called Light and Space group of artists in Los Angeles, including Robert Irwin and Doug Wheeler, was coming into prominence.
In early works such as his 1967Cross Corner Projections, beams of light projected onto walls or into corners appear to take on a palpable geometric volume. In Turrell's Wedgework Series and Ganzfield Pieces, for which he came to be best known, he floods interior spaces with colored light, creating environments in which viewers feel absorbed into dense, haze-like atmospheres of color wherein perceptions of outer boundaries and the definition of surrounding space are thoroughly masked. The result is a fully engaging, sometimes surprising and disorienting sensory experience. A central component in these and later works is the viewer's heightened awareness of the relationship between body and self with the surrounding environment and a greater concentration on one's own sensory mechanisms.
Turrell's polymath interest in the science of light and the phenomenology of perception have led him into other areas of work as well. These include holographic projections, light projections onto buildings and other architectural structures, and collaborations with architects on integrating light programs into buildings and public spaces. In 1977 he launched the most ambitious project of his career, and one of the most spectacularly monumental art works of the modern era, when he purchased Roden Crater on the edge of Arizona's Painted Desert near Flagstaff. For more than 25 years he has been excavating, carving, and transforming this volcanic mountain, creating in the bowl of the crater and underground a variety of chambers, passages, and viewing spaces from which to observe certain celestial occurrences and effects of light and sky. To date he has moved more than 1,350,000 cubic yards of rock and gravel in reshaping the crater's bowl and carving out its interior spaces. Roden Crater has been referred to as "a secular cathedral dedicated to the heavens and their light." It will open to the public in approximately two to three years.
Several permanent "skyspaces" have been built around the world including one at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York and the recently completed Live Oak Friends Meeting House in Houston. Works by Turrell are in the permanent collections of major museums including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and The Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Tending, (Blue) joins other contemporary works in the Nasher Collection by artists including Richard Serra, Mark di Suvero, Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Joel Shapiro, Antony Gormley, and Jeff Koons.
The Nasher Sculpture Center is a new cultural institution dedicated to the display and study of modern and contemporary sculpture. The $70 million Center is currently under construction on a 2.4-acre site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the heart of the Dallas Arts District. It will house the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection and is funded entirely by Raymond Nasher through The Nasher Foundation. Renzo Piano, a world-renowned architect and winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1998, is the architect of the Center's 55,000 square foot building. Piano is working in collaboration with landscape architect Peter Walker on the design of the two-acre sculpture garden.
This project is a longtime dream of Raymond Nasher and his late wife Patsy, who together formed one of the finest collections of modern and contemporary sculpture in the world. The Nasher Sculpture Center will present rotating exhibitions of works from the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection as well as special exhibitions drawn from other museums and private collections. In addition to indoor gallery space, the Center will contain an auditorium, education and research facilities, a café, and a bookstore.
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For more information, please contact:
Kristen Gibbins
Nasher Sculpture Center
214.242.5177
kgibbins@nashersculpturecenter.org
www.NasherSculptureCenter.org