“First, I am not dealing with the object. Perception is the object. Secondly, I am dealing with no image, because I want to avoid associative, symbolic thought. Thirdly, I am dealing with no focus or particular place to look. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at yourself looking.” (James Turrell)
In 2003 a small museum/guesthouse was built in the misty mountains of Niigata in Japan’s north by the Californian light artist James Turrell. Calling it The House of Light, Turrell approached the commission for the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial as a response to In Praise of Shadows, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s ode to nuance, darkness and the aesthetic of the unseen in traditional Japanese architecture and art.
Turrell has been using light, space and perception as his subject matter and his media since the 1960’s, and from an early stage his work has been informed by Japanese aesthetics and Zen teaching. The main feature of the House of Light is the Skyspace, part of an ongoing body of work where the artist brings our gaze up to the wide blue yonder. A square is cut out of the roof, framing the ubiquitous sky and rendering it strangely flat and within reach. The celestial is brought to the domestic as the huge volume of the atmosphere is compressed in a two dimensional layer on the ceiling – without context or reference, our sky becomes abstracted and we see its ever evolving colours and forms in entirely new ways.
The accommodation is no frills, with a basic kitchen and traditional futon on tatami mat bedding: the focus is on the opportunity to experience the Skyspace at its best, during dusk and dawn. Every day, guests are awoken at some point between three and four AM as the roof opens itself to a square of starry night sky which gradually shifts from black to blue. At the end of the day the reverse is silently played out as the sun sets and the sky subtly arrives at complete darkness. Dusk and dawn are thresholds where the Japanese beauty of mono no aware (found in the ‘sadness of things passing’) is heightened, bringing to mind the fourteenth century monk Yoshida Kenko’s remark that “in all things, it is the beginnings and ends that are interesting.”
Turrell is very much big in Japan. Besides the House of Light he also has site-specific works on the art-covered island of Naoshima, including Minamidera: The Back Side of the Moon, an immersive space built in collaboration with architect Tadao Ando that explores seeing in darkness, as well as a series of examples from different stages of Turrell’s career on permanent display in Ando’s submerged Chichu Musuem. The artist had a large retrospective exhibition at the Art Tower Mito and has works held in collections at several major museums around Japan including the 21st Century Museum of Modern Art, Kanazawa. At long last a Turrell Skyspace is also now underway in Australia, with the NGA’s major new commission within without set to open this spring. It should be said that Turrell’s experiential art doesn’t translate well to photographs. In the artist’s words “my work is not about my seeing, it is about your seeing. There is no one between you and your experience. It is non-vicarious art.”
