The last James Turrell exhibition in Mexico City...

In the Polanco district of Mexico City, until March 29, it will be possible to enjoy various site-specific macro installations created by the Californian artist James Turrell. In this place, visitors could find a different spiritual dimension for each room, thanks to the presence of a light trajectory defined by the artist himself "Paisajes De Luz": when light turns into a monument.

Related articles: James Turell's Skyspace Lech in Arlberg-A Comprehensive Guide on Minimalist Art-Landscape Art 

The protagonist at Jumex Museum is the installation titled Ganzfeld, total field: one of the artist's best-known experiments. Inspired by ganzfeld's concept, as it was described by the German psychologist Wolfgang Metzger in 1930, we are speaking about a method used to study brain models. With this thesis, it became clear that when color floods eyes, the brain compensates for the absence of a fire with different perceptive sensations. So, by immersing people in a luminous space, the artist found a way to alters their body’s heartbeat, breathing and blood pressure: art turns into a transcendental environment. 

Another important aspect is "the ritual of ganzfeld" that enhances its extrasensory effect. Before entering the room visitors have to take off their shoes, wear white canvas shoes and wait in a line, one next to another. Only after this ritual people will be able to access through the "door of perception". A process that could be compared with the temple attitude: when in silence you are simply waiting in contemplation that something special happens.

Thinking about his Roden Crater, that is a permanent installation installed in the heart of an extinct volcano in Arizona, near the Grand Canyon, Turrell paid homage to the museum with a utopian project, in line with the temple city of Rivera, Anahuacalli or the ideal city of Dr Atl - another illustrious volcanologist.

Turrell shows us how the transformative force of electricity composes a material landscape made of light, a perceptive landscape that transports us into timelessness of spirit rather than culture. After all, Turell is a son of the seventies of what is better known as the counterculture time and modernism. A period in which the concept of community was really connected with a new sense of mysticism, and so, what kind of instrument could better help to get close to the revelation better than the light? "With no object, no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking, ”says this 70-year-old artist with a thick white beard.

James Turrell (Los Angeles, 1943) studied psychology, mathematics, geology and astrology, by probing in years the perception of color and space, better known as one of the main important Minimalism's artists. 

Cover image:James Turrell. Pasajes de luz. Exhibition view at Museo Jumex, Città del Messico 2019 © James Turrell. Photo Florian Holzherr 
 

Stay Tuned on Kooness magazine for more exciting news from the art world.