From November 13 to December 15 2004, Almine Rech Gallery will present on a one-man show of James Turrell.
* Two major works by James Turrell will be on view: a Projection Piece, "Carn Blue" (1968), an Aperture Piece, "Cherry" (1998), and a series of 36 drawings .
The Projection pieces are light sculptures produced between 1966 and 1969, some of which have never been shown. The whole set of Projection pieces brilliantly develops the concept of multi-dimensonality based on the square, rectangle and triangle. They are formally radical and yet totally disembodied.
The Aperture pieces or Space division constructions come across like intense monochromes, works which fascinate us above all through their aesthetic purity and their great visual effectiveness. Like the Projections and Turrell's work as a whole, they challenge in particular the viewer's perceptive faculties, and the boundaries between the material and the immaterial.
These works are emblematic of an art called "perceptual", which is historically akin to minimal art, conceptual art and Land Art, which, in the 20th century from the 1960s on, and in the 21st century, have put the bases of artistic activity in a new perspective. The definitions of its world for example: the art work, the art object, the artist, his public, the market, the exhibition venue.
