A journey through James Turrell’s disorienting world at the newly expanded MASS MoCA

HYPERALLERGIC
By Christopher Snow Hopkins
Installation view of James Turrell: Into the Light in Building 6 at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (© James Turrell, photo by Florian Holzherr)
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. ---Light can be bright and dull, clear and murky, or velvety and abrasive. In James Turrell’s “Perfectly Clear” (1991), the viewer is subjected to an electromagnetic storm, a cascade of colors: rose, magenta, turquoise. Here, the medium is light, or, rather, the human optical-neurological apparatus that apprehends light. After putting on shoe covers, the viewer is ushered into a two-story space with curved walls and no visual markers (except for other visitors). What follows is a nine-minute-long celestial ballet, with slowly changing colors and 15-second intervals of stroboscopic effects. [More]

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA): "James Turrell: Into the Light" (On view, at least through 2018); 1040 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams, Massachusetts; 413.662.2111; massmoca.org
Two of the nine Turrell installations are space-limited so we ask that you make an appointment in advance.