Artwork Data
Production year: 2004
Media and technique: mortar, painted, Granaite stone, Tomuro stone
Size: H850 ×W1,117 × D1,117cm (space), W560 × D560cm (oculus)
Blue Planet Sky
James TURRELL
About the Artwork
Blue Planet Sky captures the passing light and acts on our sensory experiences (seeing and feeling). We enter a room, where our attention is drawn to a section of sky, framed in a rectangular hole in the center of the ceiling. Through our encounter with open sky in this room, we directly experience the transformations of light ceaselessly occurring from morning to night. As time passes, we grow sensitively aware of our most subtle perceptions. Through his inquiry, “How do we sense light?” Turrell seeks to awaken us to perceptions we ourselves are normally unaware of.
About the Artist
James TURRELL
Born in Los Angeles, USA in 1943. Lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA. After studying perceptual psychology, mathematics, astronomy and other natural sciences, and eventually art history, James Turrell worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from 1968 to ’71. He thereafter began creating experimental artworks that employ light. His works also show influences from his experiences of piloting airplanes. Turrell has consistently worked with light as a medium, throughout his career, in an ongoing exploration of the nature of perception. By contriving spaces for experiencing light, he acts on deeply felt sensations within us.