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| James Turrell, Orca, Blue-Red, 1968 |
FOCUS: Yves Klein | James Turrell is at
Lévy Gorvy Gallery until 6 July, 2018
From the Lévy Gorvy Gallery website:
Yves Klein once described monochrome painting as an ‘open window to
freedom,’ and across his artistic pursuits he sought to represent
boundlessness. To this end, he developed the unique ultramarine pigment
that he would patent, in 1960, as International Klein Blue. The hue was
meant to evoke the perceptual space where the earth is indivisible from
the sky. Just a few years later, James Turrell would begin experimenting
with projection, testing the ways in which light produces immaterial
architectures. Though working in different continents and contexts—Klein
as a leading member of the Nouveau réalisme movement and Turrell in the
Southern California Light and Space group—these near contemporaries
expanded the possibilities of colour and light.
FOCUS: Yves Klein | James Turrell is a two-room presentation that brings into dialogue seminal immersive works by each artist: Klein’s installation
Pigment pur bleu (1957/2018) and Turrell’s projection
Orca, Blue-Red (1968). Together, these monumental projects initiate a negotiation of space and perception.
Orca, Blue-Red is an early example of Turrell’s
ground-breaking Projection Piece series. The room-spanning installation
comprises two beams of vivid light—one blue, one red—that are projected
such that the areas of light do not meet. Between them is a narrow band
of shadow that produces an uncanny effect of negative space. The
disjuncture between the unlit passage and the opposing colours creates a
perceptual illusion that challengesthe very solidity of the gallery’s
architecture.
The void is also referenced in Klein’s
Pigment pur bleu, a
large, white wooden tray containing a flat plane of blue pigment. With
this work, Klein presents the raw material of painting—pigment—as a work
in itself, allowing the colour to remain unfixed and vulnerable to the
elements. The installation shifts the traditional vertical pictorial
space of painting to a horizontal one, reorienting the viewer to the
conditions of beholding art and drawing one’s attention to the force of
gravity.
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| Yves Klein, Pigment pur bleu, 1957/2018 |
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| Yves Klein, Pigment pur bleu, 1957/2018 (detail) |
