Prepare yourself for an adventure beyond the visible, where light isn’t just something you switch on—it’s a portal to other dimensions. This October, James Turrell, the enigmatic sorcerer of the Light and Space movement, unveils his largest European exhibition in 25 years. At Gagosian’s Le Bourget gallery in France, Turrell’s exhibition At One promises to bend reality, stretch perception, and make you question whether you’re on solid ground or hovering in some illuminated limbo.
To step into a Turrell installation is to step out of this world and into another. Like a modern-day alchemist, Turrell has turned light into his own mystical substance, shaping it to alter space and time. Imagine walking into a snowstorm, where the horizon is swallowed by white, and there’s no distinction between earth and sky.
This is the disorienting magic of Ganzfeld, All Clear (2024). The installation submerges you in color—so complete, so infinite—that you begin to lose your bearings. There are no edges, no depth, just a hypnotic sea of light that wraps around you, leaving you adrift like a sailor lost at sea, surrounded by waves of perception. It's a little like standing on the edge of the abyss, but instead of darkness, you're enveloped in a glowing spectrum.
Turrell's fascination with the Ganzfeld effect—that strange phenomenon where sensory deprivation causes the brain to hallucinate—becomes a metaphor for the mind’s endless dance with the unknown. In his world, light isn’t just something that illuminates; it’s a trickster that lures you into a space where reality dissolves like sugar in tea. You’re left floating, not sure if you’re standing on firm ground or drifting through some celestial dreamscape.
But the wizardry doesn’t stop there. In his Wedgework installation, Either Or (2024), Turrell once again uses light to push the boundaries of perception, this time by making it behave like a shape-shifting trickster.
Light interacts with reflective surfaces, expanding the room in ways that defy the laws of physics. The space you thought you were in no longer exists—it has been stretched and pulled into something ethereal. It’s like entering a funhouse of light, except the joke’s on you, because there’s no distortion—just the pure bending of reality. The room breathes, stretches, and plays tricks on your mind, leaving you suspended between worlds.
If that’s not enough to make you rethink how you see the world, Shanta, Red (1968) and Afrum Again (2024) take light’s illusion-making skills to new heights. Turrell’s early projection works conjure forms that seem so solid, so tangible, that you’re tempted to reach out and touch them—only to find they’re nothing more than light playing hide-and-seek in the corner.
It’s as if the light itself has become a phantom, moving through space, casting shadows of things that aren’t there. Turrell, like an illusionist, leaves you questioning where reality ends and imagination begins.
And then, there’s Roden Crater, Turrell’s magnum opus—the Everest of light sculptures, a vast observatory embedded in a dormant volcano in Arizona. This work is more than art; it’s an attempt to bring the cosmos down to Earth, to create a space where one can contemplate light in its most primal form. The archival materials on display at At One are like a window into the mind of a man whose life’s work is to shape the sky itself. Roden Crater is a testament to Turrell’s belief that light is not just something that reveals, but something that embodies revelation itself.
In Turrell’s universe, light is not a passive element, but an active force—a kind of living, breathing entity that molds and shapes the world around us. It’s a revelation, an invitation to leave behind the boundaries of everyday sight and enter a space where vision becomes a mystical experience. You don’t just see Turrell’s works; you feel them, as they wrap around you, fold you into their glowing arms, and carry you to a place where the ordinary rules of physics no longer apply.
So, if you're in France this autumn, don’t just pass through the gallery doors—step through a portal into James Turrell’s world. It’s a journey into the void, where light doesn’t just illuminate the path ahead; it becomes the path itself, leading you into the unknown.
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Words by AW.
Photos courtesy of James Turrell.
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