A hole in the ceiling helps bring heaven to earth: this simple idea animates a series of “Skyspace” works by James Turrell from the 1970s, including new works soon to be shown at Denmark’s ARoS Aarhus Art Museum.
Billed as the largest such work ever in a museum (some are free-standing and housed in their own buildings), its opening in June will mark the completion of an expansion of the museum in Denmark’s second-largest city, a port town about three hours’ train ride from Copenhagen.
The work is called As shown in the picture below – a dome, a sky space james Terrellaccessed via an underground corridor that leads to a domed space approximately 50 feet high and 130 feet in diameter. There is an open aperture at the top, through which what makes up the “sky” appears to descend and become visible at closer distances.
“and As shown below I’m shaping the experience of looking, rather than delivering an image,” Turrell said in a statement. “The architecture brings the sky close, so you recognize that the act of looking is the work itself. Light is not a description here; it is light. This is the substance you are in. In this space, there is weight during the day and temperature at night. The changes belong to you. “
ARoS director Rebecca Matthews called it “an extraordinary work that invites visitors to slow down, look up, and experience light, time and space in deeply moving ways.”
The new additions to Turrell will be the final touch in the ARoS Museum’s “next-level” expansion, which also includes an underground exhibition space for commissioned works that opened last summer and an outdoor “Art Plaza” space that will open next year.
As for Turrell, the acclaimed light and space artist is still busy at age 82, with work still underway on his legendary, decades-long project, Roden Crater. In an interview last summer, Terrell told new york times“We’ve completed all the plans for Roden Crater, so if I were gone, it could be done. But I want to see this with my own eyes. Moses didn’t go to the Promised Land. I’m certainly going to do my best to keep going. I may have imagined the light at the end of the tunnel, but I haven’t gone through it yet. So I’m still there, and I will be.”
