American - Artist | May 6, 1943 -
I sell blue sky and coloured air.
James Turrell
SkyBlueBlue SkyAirSellColoured
In age of consumerism and materialism, I traffic in blue sky and colored air.
AgeSkyBlueTrafficBlue SkyAir
You can't stop demographics. And show me a fence that ever worked. It didn't work at Hadrian's Wall. The Great Wall of China didn't work. The Berlin Wall.
WorkGreatMeFenceYouWall
I like to use light as a material, but my medium is actually perception. I want you to sense yourself sensing - to see yourself seeing.
LightYourselfPerceptionYouSeeing
We're made for the light of a cave and for twilight. Twilight is the time we see best. When we dim the light down, and the pupil opens, feeling comes out of the eye like touch. Then you really can feel colour, and experience it.
TimeLightBestExperienceEyeYou
Color is just in a small area of our vision, and the rest we add with the mind.
VisionMindSmallRestColorJust
There's traditionally been a large disconnection in contemporary art between the audience and the artist. Generally, audiences are looking towards what they like, and I can tell you, that's the last thing on an artist's mind.
ArtMindLookingYouArtistI Can
Generally, we use light to illuminate other things. I like the thingness, the materiality of light itself. So it feels like it's occupying the space, making a plane, being something that was there, not just passing through. Because light is just passing through. I make these spaces that seem to arrest it for our perception.
LightSpacePerceptionThroughSeem
Art history is littered with work that involves light.
WorkHistoryArtLightArt History
I like illusion when it is so convincing that we might as well see reality this way - I like to present to our belief system something that is convincing, that 'we know not to be.'
PresentRealityIllusionKnowWay
We think we receive all that we perceive, but in fact, we actually give the sky its colour.
SkyThinkColourGiveFactActually
We live within this reality we create, and we're quite unaware of how we create the reality.
LiveRealityCreateWithinQuite
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