ART: ATEN REIGN BY JAMES TURRELL AT GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: BEST OF NYC ART EXHIBITIONS 2013 by ALEXANDRA THOM

Featured
Happening
Sunday, 15th April
ART: ATEN REIGN BY JAMES TURRELL AT GUGGENHEIM MUS...

TO VIEW THE NEXT SLIDE, CLICK ON THE GOLD ARROW BELOW

By contrast, this year also yielded two of the most transcendent, phenomenological installations I’ve seen to date. One of these was James Turrell’s highly anticipated transformation of the Guggenheim rotunda with Aten Reign, the largest temporary installation Mr. Turrell or the museum has ever undertaken. Designed to look like an inverted cone, narrowing in tiers and culminating at the museum’s ocular skylight, Aten Reign moved slowly and seamlessly through the color spectrum, casting the space and the visitors below in a haze of shifting light. Above all, Turrell is an architect of light; on a wall of the exhibition, Turrell is quoted as saying that light “is not the bearer of the revelation – it is the revelation.”

December 2013