James Turrell, Night Passage, 1987
From the Guggenheim:
In other spatial interventions, such as Night Passage, Turrell uses wall partitions with rectangular windows opening onto contiguous areas filled with pure, colored light. Standing in what Turrell has called the ”sensing space,“ the viewer encounters a Ganzfeld (an optical phenomenon in which there is nothing for the eye to focus on), the volume of colored light on the other side of the partition collapsing into what appears to be a floating, luminous plane with no surface or depth. The illusion is destabilizing yet mesmerizing; it is a tangible example of the artist’s endeavor to produce sensations that are essentially prelingual, to create a transformative experience of wordless thought.
“Wordless thought.” Love it. — Jane
