James Turrell Quotes
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It's possible to gather light that's older than our solar system.
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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.
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In a way, light unites the spiritual world and the ephemeral, physical world. People frequently talk about spiritual experiences using the vocabulary of light: Saul on the road to Damascus, near-death experiences, samadhi or the light-filled void of Buddhist enlightenment.
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My desire is to bring astronomical events and objects down into your personal, lived-in space.
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I started out with projected-light works and working indoors, but I'd prepare the walls - by sanding, etcetera - the way you'd prepare a canvas for painting.
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To some degree, to control light, I have to have a way to form it, so I use form almost like the stretcher bar of a canvas.
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Nowhere in the job description of an artist is the requirement that I must validate your taste.
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From the very beginning, I was very interested just in light, and art seemed to be a way to work with it.
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I sell blue sky and coloured air.
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We have spent billions to go to the moon - we go to this lesser satellite called the moon and say we are in space, but we are in space right now; we just don't feel ourselves to be in space. Some forms of art and some forms of spirituality do give us that sense.
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Each day is a different length of time and that gives a different length to the cusp between light and darkness or darkness and light.
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It is only when light is reduced that the pupil opens and feeling goes out of the eyes like touch.
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The sky always seems to be out there, away from us. I like to bring it down in close contact with us, so you feel you are in it. We feel we are at the bottom of this ocean of air; we are actually on a planet.
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I don't want you looking at the light fixture; I want you looking at where light goes. But more than that, I'm interested in the effect of light upon you and your perceptions.
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In age of consumerism and materialism, I traffic in blue sky and colored air.
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I feel that I want to use light as this wonderful and magic elixir that we drink as Vitamin D through the skin - and I mean, we are literally light-eaters - to then affect the way that we see.
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All art is contemporary art because it had to be made when it was now.
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I like to use light as a material, but my medium is actually perception. I want you to sense yourself sensing - to see yourself seeing.
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I am interested in relating the things we see with the things we see with our eyes closed.
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Color is just in a small area of our vision, and the rest we add with the mind.
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I live in the sky as a pilot, so it has great meaning to me.
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There is an idea, first of all, of vision fully formed with the eyes closed. Of course the vision we have in a lucid dream often has greater lucidity and clarity than vision with the eyes open.
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I haven't been that great at attending my own openings. Still, I'm learning to enjoy this a lot more than I used to.
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We're made for the light of a cave and for twilight. Twilight is the time we see best. When we dim the light down, and the pupil opens, feeling comes out of the eye like touch. Then you really can feel colour, and experience it.