PRSENTATION:James Turrell-Lifting the Veil

James Turrell investigates light as both a material and a means of perception, exploring its relationship to painting and sculpture. Through minimal, carefully structured works, he reveals the boundaries of human vision while evoking transcendence and introspection. Influenced by his Quaker faith, Turrell connects light to a spiritual search for humanity’s place in the universe. His installations encourage quiet contemplation and heightened self-awareness through experiences of stillness, perception, and the sublime.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Archive

The exhibition “Lifting the Veil” offers a rare and expansive survey of the work of James Turrell, tracing more than five decades of his exploration of light, perception, and consciousness. Presented at Gagosian Hong Kong, the exhibition brings together holograms, prints, and three immersive “Glassworks”, alongside site plans, photographs, and architectural models related to Turrell’s celebrated “Skyspaces” and his monumental lifelong project, “Roden Crater”.

At the core of Turrell’s practice is the transformation of light from a tool of illumination into a medium of direct experience. Since the 1960s, when he began experimenting with projected and natural light in his Santa Monica studio, the artist has pursued the perceptual and psychological dimensions of seeing itself. As Turrell famously observed, “Generally, light is used to reveal something about the object. I use light as the revelation itself.” In the context of Hong Kong—a city defined by verticality, density, and relentless luminosity—these works create a striking counterpoint, inviting viewers into moments of stillness, contemplation, and heightened sensory awareness.

A central focus of the exhibition is a sequence of three “Glassworks”—“Resolute” (2025), “Patmos” (2024), and “Of One Mind “(2024)—each installed within specially constructed chambers inside the gallery. Initiated in 2001, the Glassworks series employs computer-controlled LED systems positioned behind shaped apertures embedded in the wall: an ellipse, a diamond, and a rectangle. Through gradual chromatic transitions, the works generate luminous fields that pulse between center and edge, dissolving distinctions between surface and depth. At moments, the compositions flatten into singular planes of color; at others, they appear to open into infinite spatial recessions. Installed as a carefully calibrated progression, the three environments guide visitors through a nuanced choreography of perception, where light becomes both atmosphere and architecture.

Also featured are Turrell’s holograms, first developed more than four decades ago. Using reflected and transmitted light, these works produce the illusion of hovering, immaterial forms that appear to shift in color, position, and depth as viewers move around them. Suspended between presence and disappearance, the holograms resonate with philosophical and aesthetic traditions that emphasize emptiness, impermanence, and the instability of perception. Accompanying these works are prints connected to “Aten Reign” (2013), Turrell’s landmark installation at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which transformed the museum’s iconic rotunda into a vast immersive field of changing light and color.

The exhibition further expands beyond completed artworks to reveal the conceptual and architectural foundations of Turrell’s practice. Models and maquettes of his “Skyspaces”—architectural chambers with apertures open to the sky—demonstrate how he frames celestial light as a living, perceptual medium. These spaces subtly alter viewers’ awareness of atmosphere, duration, and scale, transforming the act of looking into an immersive and meditative experience.

The culmination of the exhibition is the presentation of materials related to “Roden Crater”, Turrell’s magnum opus, under continuous construction since 1977 in the Desert of northern Arizona. Conceived within an extinct volcanic cinder cone, “Roden Crater” functions as a monumental naked-eye observatory dedicated to the perception of light, time, and cosmic phenomena. Site plans, photographs, and models on view reveal the extraordinary ambition of the project, which merges land art, architecture, astronomy, and phenomenology into a single experiential environment. Still unfinished, the work remains one of the most visionary and unprecedented artistic undertakings of the contemporary era.

Rather than following a strictly chronological structure, “Lifting the Veil” unfolds through shifting states of perception. Across media, decades, and scales, the exhibition charts Turrell’s sustained investigation into how light shapes human consciousness and spatial awareness. In doing so, it positions perception itself—not the object—as the true subject of the work.

Photo: James TurrellRainbow over Roden Crater, 2003, © James Turrell, Photo: Florian Holzherr, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Info: Gagosian, 7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 28/5-1/8/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, https://gagosian.com/