My dissertation was centred around Turrell's use of light as a sculptural material and the idea of perception and I was very powerfully affected by encountering two of his installations. The following is an excerpt from my diss.
Tremenheree
Skyspace: Cornwall 2014 www.tremenheree.co.uk
I enter the installation through an enclosed tunnel;
coming from a recognisable garden landscape exterior, from the blue sky of a
sunny summer afternoon and moving into an elliptical white interior space which
yet gives access to the outside through the circular hole
cut in the curved roof which frames the sky. I feel an
immediate loss of perspective: I have no depth perception.
The portion of sky visible ceases to be part of a
recognisable vast and far distant vista and instead becomes a three dimensional
form that is hovering within my immediate vicinity, just over my head. The noun
form is an inadequate descriptor yet
our language fails to provide me with a better way to convey the identity, the
presence of this object/non-object. The
surrounding white walls take on a complementary hue; looking black against the
pearly grey of the sky. I have no clear sense of the division between interior
and exterior; no grasp of the scale of the form or its size in relation to me,
my understanding of my sense of place in the world disappears. I feel like a
stranger in a strange land. The elliptical form is descending towards me as a
solid shape and simultaneously rising above me drawing me up into its endless
space.
I feel as if I
am falling upwards- my normal awareness of my physical presence, my embodiment
in my personal space-time no longer has meaning. I can sense my feet upon the
ground, my physical presence anchoring me, yet I am aware of a sense of weightlessness
as I look upwards. I am floating into
unknown and unreadable parameters of being. Space and my previous understanding
of it seem to turn inside out as I attain an indescribable new dimension. I am
flickering between inside and outside, I am inhabiting a space that is within
yet also without. This perception is not
disorienting in an unpleasant vertiginous way, it is instead peaceful,
meditative and other worldly. It is an almost an “out-of –body” experience
where time and space cease to hold their accepted meaning.
Glass Works Series Royal
Academy 2014
From the traditional environs and yellow artificial
light of the RA hallway, I enter the first of the series of three
interconnected spaces that hold the Turrell installations and my eyes are immediately
flooded with sumptuous light and colour. It touches more than just my eyes, I feel
as if I am bathing in light. It clings to me, I am saturated with it, immersed
in it. I am inhaling it. The colour emanates from a rectangular form on the far
wall which at first seems to be flat but then appears to stand proud of the
wall. The light appears to form a solid plane, it has a tangible presence. I am transfixed; the colours are so glowing,
so overwhelmingly strong and rich. I am sharing the space with other viewers
yet their presence is insignificant, they hover on the edge of my vision but do
not distract from my experience. I am entranced by the colours which slowly
transform and cycle through their particular colour spectrum, blues to greens
to yellows, or reds to purples to blues. Each shade is full of an ineffable
force, not flat and static but vital and awake, a living breathing material, an
entity of enormous energy and power.
Although I only
have to turn my head to see back through the open door and the space of
normality outside, of visitors coming and going, this only enhances the altered
state I am experiencing. The light and
colour are so powerful and mesmerising that I lose myself in the beautiful motion.
I am embodied in the light, drawn towards the colour as if it is a black hole
exerting inexorable force, an opening into another world. Yet simultaneously it
appears to be emanating out into the space. My perspective is gone; my sense of
space and of the passing of time is
irrelevant. I can’t apply the structures of my usual world to these
environments. I can only drink in the sensation, feel it with my skin, sense it
as a real entity that mingles its essence with mine. I have temporarily stepped
out of the normality of my perceived and accepted reality and entered into a communion
with another dimension, my perception has been turned inside out. I have no sense
of being an observer, there is nothing to observe. I am instead having the
experience of becoming one with my environment in a way I never do normally. I
cannot usually escape my personal viewpoint that I carry around, me as a
distinct entity travelling through and making sense of my surroundings from my
personal perspective. This Turrell installation is as close as I can come to
losing that sense of me as separate from my environs.
To summarise my experience, current theoretical
physics postulates the existence of dimensions beyond the three that we inhabit
(four if you include time). Turrell’s work induces this sense of profound
alteration. I transcended my personal spatial and temporal perspectives and
caught a glimpse of a radically different state of being. My viewpoint was
fundamentally challenged through the use of light which provoked profound
metaphysical[1]
questions regarding the structure of our universe. Many of my previous
encounters with painting and sculpture, with installation and film, have been
powerful. They have intrigued, repelled, entranced and baffled. None have
however come close to the Turrell experience.
“We eat
light; drink it in through our skins. With a little more exposure to light you
feel part of things physically. I like the power of light and space physically
because you can order
it materially. Seeing is a very sensuous act-there’s a
sweet deliciousness to feeling yourself see something.” (Govan, 2013, p13)
When
you enter the space of a Turrell light work you are becoming part of a
philosophical enquiry into the nature of reality itself. The exchange between
the viewer and the art work is the catalyst that transforms our perception; his
work conveys you to an altered state of reality; it is immersive and overwhelming;
it overrides the notions of duality: interior/exterior; subject/object;
mind/body that we subconsciously adhere to and which form the fundamental
definition of an art object. Turrell removes not only the object but also the
subject and creates instead a transcendent experience; I am truly embodied
within the universe.
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