° 1943

Born in Los Angeles (US).

"I feel my work is made for one being, one individual. You could say that's me, but that's not really true. It's for an idealized viewer. Sometimes I'm kind of cranky coming to see something. I saw the Mona Lisa when it was in L.A., saw it for 13 seconds and had to move on. But, you know, there's this slow-food movement right now. Maybe we could also have a slow-art movement, and take an hour."

James Turrell is one of the pioneers of the Californian post-minimal, conceptual art scene, in which – this in clear contrast in to its New York counterpart – perceptual and phenomenological concerns have traditionally played a much larger role. Partly inspired by the sublime luminosity of the Californian sky and the desert landscape of the American Southwest, Turrell’s has been making light installations which recall both the traditions of landscape painting and landscape art as well as the more recent genres of monochrome abstraction and land art proper.