|
|
|
|
|
|
08/07/07
POMONA COLLEGE CELEBRATES JAMES TURRELL’S FIRST PUBLIC SKYSPACE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Museum Exhibition, Symposium, and Skyspace Opening
Highlight the Arts at Pomona College
Michael Govan to be Keynote Speaker at Symposium |
 |
CLAREMONT, Calif.—Pomona College is pleased to announce an
exhibition and symposium for a Skyspace created by Pomona
College alumnus (1965) James Turrell. This will be the first
Skyspace in Southern California to be regularly accessible
to the public.
Turrell—an internationally acclaimed light and space artist
and the architect of Roden Crater—has completed private
commissions for Skyspaces in Southern California in the
past, but none of them are available for public viewing. The
new Skyspace, located in the Draper Courtyard of the new
Lincoln and Edmunds Buildings on the Pomona campus, has been
realized in collaboration with consulting architects Marmol
Radziner + Associates AIA.
The exhibition and symposium offer audiences an in-depth
look at Turrell’s work—work that was profoundly influenced
by his undergraduate studies at Pomona College in perceptual
psychology and mathematics. The academic buildings
surrounding the Skyspace house the College’s departments and
programs related to the science of mind—such as computer
science, psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science—as
well as the earth sciences of geology and environmental
analysis.
“We are honored that James Turrell has created a work for
the courtyard of the Lincoln and Edmunds Buildings,” says
Pomona College President David Oxtoby. “He is a
distinguished alumnus of the College, and his intellectual
concerns—an art grounded in the psychology of perception—are
central to many of the academic disciplines housed in the
new building complex.”
The Skyspace—a precisely designed architectural installation
that heightens the viewer’s awareness of light, sky and the
activity of perception—is the form for which Turrell is
renowned. Building on this formal vocabulary, the artist has
created an open, transparent courtyard space in which a
floating metal canopy shades the seating area and provides a
frame for the sky. During the transition from twilight to
full night, lighting elements, programmed to change in
intensity and hue as they wash the underside of the canopy,
create the changing perception of sky as space, form, object
and void. A shallow pool centered beneath the opening to the
sky mirrors the daytime sky and reflects a dark echo of the
night sky.
In honor of the new Skyspace, the Pomona College Museum of
Art will present James Turrell at Pomona College, an
exhibition uniting the various threads of Turrell’s artistic
practice. The exhibition includes End Around, one of the
artist’s Ganzfeld works; two LED Tall Glass works from 2006,
Gathered Light and Silent Leading; and a selection of models
and drawings. The exhibition opens Tuesday, September 4,
2007 and continues through May 17, 2008.
The Tall Glass pieces consist of a core of LEDs individually
programmed by Turrell to create a subtle shift in color over
time, similar to the deliberate but beautiful fashion in
which the sky changes from late afternoon to night. However,
the careful construction of these works ensures that the
viewer sees only a floating, changing field of light—a
subtle revelatory experience of photons as tangible entities
and physical presence.
In a Ganzfeld space, depth, surface and color are replaced
by a thick, all-encompassing mist of light. Upon entering
the chamber of End Around, the visitor instinctively
approaches what appears to be a faint wall of light in the
distance. But upon reaching the light source, the viewer’s
entire visual field is consumed by an apparently limitless
field of blue light. Turrell engineers the Ganzfeld works to
eliminate all visual cues that the human brain processes to
construct depth and surface. As a result, the viewer is
unable to tell whether the ethereal blue field seen from the
platform extends for inches, feet or into infinity. Here,
light is perceived as light, not as illumination on an
object or surface.
“The exhibition and Skyspace define the issues that have
animated Mr. Turrell’s distinguished career—the complex
interplay of light, sky, atmosphere
and human perception,” says Kathleen Stewart Howe, Sarah
Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the Pomona
College Museum of Art. “We are delighted to have this
important and inviting work of art as the centerpiece of a
dynamic academic cluster where it can play a vital role in
our intellectual community.”
In conjunction with the exhibition and dedication, Pomona
College will host a program titled James Turrell: Knowing
Light on Saturday, October 13, 2007, 1:30–4 p.m. The program
includes Michael Govan—CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art—as the keynote speaker;
William Banks, Professor of Psychology at Pomona College, on
perceptual psychology; and a conversation with Turrell and
Arden Reed, Arthur M. Dole and Fanny M. Dole Professor of
English at Pomona College. The symposium is free and open to
the public. (See details below).
Turrell is a native of Los Angeles who grew up in Pasadena,
California. He received his undergraduate degree in
perceptual psychology from Pomona College in 1965, and an
M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate School in 1973. His work has
been recognized with a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant,”
a Guggenheim Fellowship, and multiple grants through the
National Endowment for the Arts. In 2001, Turrell received
an honorary doctorate from Pomona College. His creations
have graced the halls and collections of institutions
throughout the world, including the Whitney Museum of
American Art, the DeYoung Museum, the Museum of Modern Art,
the Hirshhorn Museum, P.S.1 and the Museum of Contemporary
Art, Los Angeles. Turrell currently resides in Flagstaff,
Arizona where he has worked for more than 30 years on his
largest and most ambitious project—the Roden Crater, an
ancient volcano crater that he is molding into one of the
world’s most unusual and compelling light observatories.
James Turrell at Pomona College
September 4, 2007 through May 17, 2008
Pomona College Museum of Art, (corner of College and Bonita
Avenues), Claremont
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Friday, 12–5 p.m.; Saturday and
Sunday, 1–5 p.m.
Free admission (parking on the street – College and Bonita
Aves.)
(over)
For information: 909.621.8283 or visit
www.pomona.edu/museum
For directions log onto:
http://pomona.edu/Welcome/ExplorePomona/HowToGetHere.shtml
(Metrolink station is just two blocks away).
Symposium – James Turrell: Knowing Light
Saturday, October 13, 2007, 1:30–4 p.m. Reception to follow.
Keynote speaker Michael Govan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg
Director, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Bridges Hall of Music, 150 E. Fourth St., Pomona College,
Claremont
For information: 909.621.8283 or visit
www.pomona.edu/museum
(Reception to follow the symposium. 4:30—7:00 p.m. at both
the Museum and the Skyspace)
Skyspace
The Skyspace will open for visitors on Saturday, October 13.
Draper Courtyard, Pomona College (corner of 6th Street and
College Way), Claremont
Public Hours: The public is invited to visit the Skyspace on
Sundays and Mondays, 10:00 a.m.—8:00 p.m. The lighting
program is synchronized to sunset.
Groups of 10 or more must make arrangements with the Museum.
For information: 909.621.8283 or visit
www.pomona.edu/museum
On October 13 only, the parking structure at 156 E 7th
Street, immediately adjacent to the Skyspace, will be
available for public parking.
ABOUT POMONA COLLEGE
Established in 1887, Pomona College is widely regarded as
one of the premier liberal arts colleges in America. Located
35 miles east of Los Angeles in Claremont, California,
Pomona College is the founding member of The Claremont
Colleges, a consortium of seven independent institutions
blending the intimate atmosphere of small colleges with the
academic and social resources of a university.
Contact: Carolyn Campbell, Susan Martin
Campbell Communications
310.659.5427 /
campcom@pacbell.net
310.975.9970 /
martinsusan@cybermesa.com
Cynthia Peters, Pomona College
909.621.8515 /
cynthia.peters@pomona.edu |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Quick Links |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Explore Pomona's Web |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Find It |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Search |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
