"For over half a century, the American artist James Turrell has worked directly with light and space to create artworks that engage viewers with the limits and wonder of human perception. ...
Turrell often cites the Parable of Plato's Cave to introduce the notion that we are living in a reality of our own creation, subject to our human sensory limitations as well as contextual and cultural norms. This is evident in Turrell's over eighty Skyspaces, chambers with an aperture in the ceiling open to the sky. The simple act of witnessing the sky from within a Turrell Skyspace, notably at dawn and dusk, reveals how we internally create the colors we see and thus, our perceived reality. ...
Turrell's medium is pure light. He says, 'My work has no object, no image and no focus. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking. What is important to me is to create an experience of wordless thought.'"
Geometry of Motion 1920s/1970s, March 19–July 28, 2008, The Yoshiko and Akio Morita Media Gallery, second floor, The Museum of Modern Art.
"This exhibition considers the transformation of the art object from static image to light projection within two distinct artistic lineages: the unconventional optical techniques and social analyses of the 1920s Neue Optik, or 'New Vision,' generation of artists, among them László Moholy–Nagy, Hans Richter, and Marcel Duchamp; and the situational aesthetics advanced by Gordon Matta–Clark, Robert Smithson, and Anthony McCall in the 1970s. Drawing attention to the conditions and complexities of perception–both within the framework of institutional display and in other surroundings–these artists have redefined the social potential of visual agency."