"My work is about space and the light that inhabits it. It is about how you confront that space and plumb it. It is about your seeing."

James Turrell (b. 1943, Los Angeles, California) is a visionary American artist internationally acclaimed for his groundbreaking exploration of light, space, and perception. Known for creating immersive installations that engage viewers with the limits and possibilities of human perception, Turrell has been transforming the experience of light into art for over five decades. His practice exists at the intersection of art, science, architecture, astronomy, and meditation, creating works that are not about light, but are light itself—requiring the viewer's active participation to complete the experience.

Turrell studied perceptual psychology and mathematics at Pomona College before receiving an MFA from Claremont Graduate School in 1973. His early involvement with the Light and Space movement in Southern California established his trajectory as an artist concerned with phenomenological experience. Throughout his career, Turrell has created various series of works including Projection Pieces, Shallow Space Constructions, Dark Spaces, Ganzfelds, Skyspaces, and Autonomous Structures. His most ambitious project, Roden Crater—a massive naked-eye observatory built within an extinct volcanic cinder cone in northern Arizona—has been under construction since 1979 and represents his life's work. Today, Turrell divides his time between Flagstaff, Arizona, and his cattle ranch in western Australia, continuing to push the boundaries of how we perceive and experience light.

Celestial Vault (1996). Photo: Jannes Linders / Courtesy of Stroom Den Haag / Copyright James Turrell