dayoutlast is a record of my direct engagement with mostly contemporary art, mostly Los Angelean.

As this blog has evolved since its 2010 inception, so has my perspective. What I once perceived as central within the investigation was what was central, literally, within the photographic frame that I shared here. While still an important consideration, such thinking has also given way to more peripheral considerations, ones also accompanied occasionally by text (written manifestation of thought) and the oscillations between them. What's missing here are larger unknowns surrounding issues of presentation and representation; the amount of time and space it actually takes to accomplish such first-hand observations; and the quandaries between documentation and interpretation.

Despite my attempt to communicate here with image and text what is essential in some respect about the artwork, neither representation should ever be considered a substitution for the primary viewing experience. Of course, occasionally there are exceptions.

Most of the time, these posts are merely remnants---residual fragments---from my last day out.

Saturday, August 11, 2018

James Turrell @ Kayne Griffin and Corcoran


Pluto, Small Glass, 2018
L.E.D. light, etched glass and shallow space
27 1/2 x 19 5/8 inches



Sometime in the summer of 2000 for the first time, I came across a large body of Turrell's work at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary of Art in Arizona.  Seeing certain works, especially the ganzfeld works, they profoundly changed the way that I would think about the possibilities of art, painting in particular, and the effects of light and color specifically.  It seemed that painted pigments other than reflective whites would eventually fall by the wayside as light itself would become a focal point of my own artistic investigation. 

Over the past twenty years, my interest in this work has waned some, especially where small lozenge works like the one pictured above apply.  I have said it before in this blog, but these glass-surfaced light works seem like a regression; they resemble the early holes in the walls with light provided by CRT television sets.  The only difference now is that it seems the CRT itself is reinvented and situated in the wall.  

While the colors may be pleasing enough, they don't seem to challenge nor push concepts of being nor perceptions about bodies in space.  Such things easier said than done, perhaps they hold an important place in the Turrell portfolio, especially where such works may fund larger ones, for example, the Roden Crater, somewhere in the northwestern Arizona desert. I'm looking forward to completing the circle by visiting this earthwork when it is open for public-viewing. Until then, I will likely bypass future iterations of these wall works. What can I say? I mean, even Pluto has been demoted.

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