Now on display until 1 August, Gagosian Gallery in Hong Kong presents five decades of James Turrell’s genius. A leading artist in the California Light and Space Movement, Turrell shapes perception by using light not to illuminate, but as a pliable medium itself. The exhibition combines glassworks, prints, holograms, site plans and models to trace his long, pioneering career.
His famous Skyspaces are individual chambers with apertures in the ceiling, bathing the viewer in natural and artificial light, amplifying their senses and providing an immersive experience. The artist has devoted his life to understanding how colour and light produce psychological responses. Manipulating intangible objects in such a way leads one to question their very nature and existence in our world on a much deeper level.
Three glassworks are shown in the exhibition: Resolute (2025), Patmos (2024) and One Mind (2024), each found inside a chamber built within the gallery. These works consist of computer-controlled LED lights behind a silhouette of etched glass in the wall. Depth and flatness take turns leading the space as the colour-changing hues shift over a period of time, transforming the atmosphere. Turrell states he uses “light as a revelation”; as viewers look into his work, they feel their perceptions and state of mind change. We know colour affects our emotions, so as you gaze into the light, you feel yourself enter an almost hypnotic state, moving through a fluid series of memories, thoughts, ideas and feelings. A uniquely transformative experience.
Viewers also get to see Turrell’s holograms, which reflect and transmit floating illusions of tangible forms varying in colour, position, shape and depth. These pieces especially resonate with Asian philosophy and beliefs that do not view emptiness as a void or lack of existence, but as a catalyst for creativity and connectedness. Holograms both exist and do not; concurrently, this presence and absence align with the idea that they share a dynamic, moldable relationship, together crafting an ever-changing reality. These works are displayed next to prints of Aten Reign (2013), a temporary installation at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the museum’s most visited exhibition of that year.
Lifting the Veil traces the way Turrell’s focus on light, colour, space and perception has developed over the years, and the constantly evolving formats he designs to visualise his works. Inside a volcanic cinder cone in the Painted Desert in Northern Arizona, the artist is continuing to create his magnum opus, which he started in 1977. This ambitious venture will one day be a naked-eye celestial observatory spanning two miles and rising hundreds of feet above the desolate area. At Gagosian Gallery, visitors can see everything from site plans and models to photographs of the ongoing project.
James Turrell, master of light, is revered for turning the immateriality of light into something that can be manipulated to alter impressions both of a space and the mind of its observer. The way the artist blends art into the natural world with such intention has a serenely meditative effect: you examine yourself as you are enveloped in the world around you. His work is something you have to see to truly take in the full effects of his legendary pieces.
The exhibition Lifting the Veil by James Turrell is on view until 1 August at Gagosian, 7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street Central, Hong Kong.
