The sculptor of light: the art of James Turrell and the revelation of the invisible

Born on May 6, 1943, in Los Angeles, the American is widely known as one of the most important names in contemporary art, often referred to as "the master of light." His work is centered on light, color, perception, and space - exploring how they can affect the sensory experience and consciousness of the viewer.

Before becoming an artist, Turrell studied mathematics, psychology of perception, and astronomy. The son of an aerospace engineer, he was inspired by the sky from a young age. At 16, he earned his pilot's license and has been flying ever since. "I remember flying once in the midst of the tule fog, a specific fog of California. There was a stratus cloud above and the sun about to rise, which made the sky red, then orange, and then yellow. Crossing that completely abstract landscape was breathtaking," he recalls.

Afterwards, he obtained an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) from Claremont Graduate School, and his deep interest in human perception formed the basis of his artistic work. During the 1960s, he became part of the Light and Space movement, which emerged in Southern California as a direct response to the East Coast Minimalism. Instead of the repetition of forms and the rigidity of steel and concrete, artists (like Robert Irwin, Larry Bell, Doug Wheeler, and of course, James Turrell) explored light, translucent materials, color, and space as sculptural and immersive elements, aiming to alter the viewer's perception.

The movement did not arise by chance in California. The landscape of the southern state, with open skies, intense sunlight, the meeting of deserts and oceans directly influenced the artists. Additionally, the proximity to the aerospace industry and surfing was also one of the reasons: many used materials developed for planes, cars, and surfboards — such as resin, acrylic, and fiberglass — that allowed for new visual experiences. And of course, the distance from New York allowed them more freedom to explore new languages and cross boundaries between art, architecture, science, and technology.

The main characteristics of the movement are: the use of natural and artificial light as artistic raw material; the exploration of translucent industrial materials; the creation of immersive installations; an interest in sensory perception, often influenced by psychology, neuroscience, physics, and spirituality; works that change with time, with daylight, with the viewer's movement.

The movement was directly influenced by Phenomenology — a philosophical current that emerged in the early 20th century and was developed by thinkers like Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who argued that the body is our main means of being in the world. Simply put, it is the study of conscious experience — how things appear to us, before any rational, scientific, or symbolic analysis. The main question of this philosophical current is: "How does this present itself to me in experience?" and it focuses on the subject and the direct relationship with the world, without preconceived notions. It seeks to understand how we perceive color, light, space, sound, time, and even feelings.

This current inspired many artists to abandon representation and concentrate on the immediate and sensory experience of the work. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what the work "means": what matters is how it makes you feel, how it changes when you move, how your body reacts to light, scale, time, and silence. The work is not "complete" without the viewer — it is completed in their perception.

One of Turrell's first iconic works was "Afrum (Proto)," from 1966. The piece consists of a beam of light projected into a corner of the room, creating the illusion of a floating cube — a precise manifestation of his intention: to make light tangible, almost physical, and to confuse spatial perception. The work was a true watershed moment regarding art as perceptual experience.

This was part of the experiences he began to develop at the Mendota Hotel, an abandoned building in Santa Monica where he lived and transformed into a light laboratory. Visually, the work is something simple, but with immense sensory and perceptual impact. Here, Turrell plays with the boundary between presence, illusion, materiality, and immateriality. In the end, you are not "seeing" an object; you are interacting with light, with space, with your own body and its position in the environment.

"Afrum (Proto)" was one of the first works to use light as its main medium, rather than as an auxiliary tool. Here, it marks the beginning of the style that Turrell would develop for decades — a work centered on pure sensory experiences.

Three years later, Turrell is expelled from the abandoned building because the city of Santa Monica deemed it unfit for habitation. The authorities remove him from the location under the justification of safety, but for him, this was a significant cut to his workflow. Some of the works and experiences made there were lost or were never properly documented.

This episode marks the end of a free and challenging era, but also the necessary push for a transition. Shortly after, Turrell turns to nature as the next "studio" — and it is here that the seed of Roden Crater emerges, which becomes his major life project, and his obsession with creating perceptual environments more connected to the cosmos takes shape.

The project is a monumental work of art and perhaps the most ambitious of the century, uniting art, science, spirituality, architecture, and cosmology. Located in the Flagstaff desert, Arizona, Turrell bought the property in 1977. Since then, he has been transforming the extinct volcanic crater into a monumental celestial observatory, sculpted to manipulate and amplify our perception of light, space, and time.

The project has lasted over 40 years and is still ongoing. The crater already contains more than 20 interconnected spaces, like the East Portal, the Sun and Moon Chamber, and the Alpha (East) Tunnel, all designed with architectural and mathematical precision to capture different behaviors of light throughout the year.

Roden Crater has always required enormous resources. It has received support from foundations such as the Dia Art Foundation and, more recently, rapper Kanye West, who declared himself fascinated by the project and donated millions after visiting the site and even filming the movie Jesus is King there.

Turrell often says that Roden Crater is not a sculpture or installation, but a tool for seeing. The experience of space is just as important as the observation of the sky.

Now, already with a changed direction, Turrell presents, in the 1980s, his "Skyspaces" — perhaps his most emblematic and accessible series, a kind of "window to the infinite," transforming the sky into living sculpture.

The closed architectural structures, usually in the form of a room or pavilion with an opening in the ceiling, appear simple. But all the surrounding architecture is designed to alter the perception of light, space, and time. From the inside, the sky seems closer, denser, and more intense, as if it were a solid plane. As natural light changes throughout the day, the perception of the sky also changes.

Currently, there are more than 80 Skyspaces around the world, scattered across the USA, Japan, Germany, Mexico, Australia, Norway, China, and the United Kingdom. James sees them as places for pause, introspection, and perceptual transformation. He says that his goal is not to show something, but to show you seeing — that is, to make the act of perception itself visible.

"My art has no object, no image, no focus," he summarized years ago. In the 2000s, the "Ganzfelds" encapsulate this well. The word is German and means "total field" or "complete field," referring to immersive environments of diffuse light that eliminate any visible spatial reference. Upon entering a Ganzfeld, you completely lose the sense of depth, distance, limit, or form.

The concept comes from experiments conducted by psychologists in the 1930s, who discovered that when we are exposed to constant and homogeneous sensory stimuli, the brain enters a perceptual collapse, which can cause effects such as mild visual hallucinations, a sense of floating, or an altered perception of the body in space. Turrell took this to art — and on a monumental scale. "I want to feel it, perceive its presence in space and how it inhabits it," he states. "We eat light; it is nourishment. Without it, our balance is lost. We need light for melatonin, serotonin, vitamin D...", he comments about light.

His references and influences come from various sources, but the spiritual dimension seems to guide him. Turrell grew up in a Quaker family in Pasadena, California. He himself says that the silent meetings he attended in childhood — where people sat in total silence, waiting for an inner experience — were formative for what he would seek to do artistically.

The Quakers (or "Religious Society of Friends") are a Protestant Christian group that emerged in the 17th century in England. They move away from traditional hierarchies and rituals and believe that each individual carries an inner divine spark, something they call "Inner Light." They gather in silence, without pastors, and wait for the "light" to speak in the silence. It is a spiritual practice based on stillness, introspection, listening, and full presence.

This is where the emphasis on silence and contemplation in Turrell's works comes from, and his belief that light is a sacred matter. Moreover, for him, seeing is not just an ocular process — it is an act of presence, almost mystical. "I consider myself a Quaker as an artist. My work is about making you perceive. That is what happens in Quaker meetings — you sit quietly and pay attention to your own perception, to your inner light," he once said.

Even with an exemplary career, his family — conservative and Quaker — never fully recognized him. "They do not believe in what I do. To them, art is vanity, a stimulus to the ego. And mind you, I have even created meeting houses [for Quaker meetings] and even an installation in a reformed Lutheran chapel in Berlin... Only when I bought the ranch next to the volcano did they start to think I had 'returned to reason.' Anyway, I was supposed to be useful by planting and feeding others!" he tells.

In the end, his work transcends the object and dives into pure experience. His work invites us to see differently, to pay attention to the invisible, the intangible, to what we feel but cannot touch — light, time, sky, space. Turrell is, above all, a sculptor of perception. And, just as, she... "Deep down, we do not change; we just reveal ourselves slowly," he affirms.