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Visitors can view plans for Turrell’s upcoming Wadi AlFann commission. He is creating a monumental sequence of chambers within the canyon floor that will generate a sensorial experience of space, colour, and perception.
Wadi AlFann presents James Turrell is an exhibition surveying the work of pioneering Light and Space artist James Turrell. The exhibition will run from 16 January until 19 April 2025 and is presented by Wadi AlFann as part of the AlUla Arts Festival 2025.
The exhibition is curated by Guest Curator Michael Govan and CEO of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and curator of James Turrell’s major retrospective at LACMA in 2013-14. It connects Turrell’s legacy with his ambitious Wadi AlFann commission, offering visitors an unparalleled experience of Light and Space. On view are light art installations, renders, plans, and a constellation map relating to his upcoming commission in AlUla.
The exhibition is curated by Guest Curator Michael Govan and CEO of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and curator of James Turrell’s major retrospective at LACMA in 2013-14. It connects Turrell’s legacy with his ambitious Wadi AlFann commission, offering visitors an unparalleled experience of Light and Space. On view are light art installations, renders, plans, and a constellation map relating to his upcoming commission in AlUla.
Experiencing the ‘thingness of light’ as well as elements of sky and terrain, the viewer will explore these spaces via a series of tunnels and stairs. The large-scale commission will examine the very nature of seeing and offer a profound opportunity to experience art in dialogue with nature.
The exhibition includes four works from the Royal Commission for AlUla and private collections, which showcase the artist’s mastery of light as a medium. Turrell’s work immerses us in what he describes as ‘the wordless thought that comes from looking at a fire’, each work is a meditation on the nature of perception. This exhibition offers the rare opportunity to see one of his very earliest works and one of his most recent pieces.
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Highlights from the Royal Commission for AlUla’s contemporary art collection include Cross Corner projection work Alta (1968), which transforms the dim corner of a room into a luminous pyramid, the pink-violet light creates planes that appear to be solid. The exhibition also includes Jubilee, Circular Glass (2021), a circular glass screen where colours mutate hypnotically. However much the viewer stares, it is hard to recognise the colours changing, yet the work takes us imperceptibly from a dazzling crimson to an icy blue. Relating to the oculus Turrell will install in Wadi AlFann, AlUla, the disc of light seems a palpable intervention from another reality.
Lastly, a work from his Magnatron series evokes the artist’s childhood memories of glimpsing the flickering light of televisions through the windows of neighboring houses, and the Hologram series, which reveals a luminous geometric shape floating in space will also be included.
Lastly, a work from his Magnatron series evokes the artist’s childhood memories of glimpsing the flickering light of televisions through the windows of neighboring houses, and the Hologram series, which reveals a luminous geometric shape floating in space will also be included.
I first visited the Wadi AlFann site in 2020. I was surprised that the sandstone formations looked very similar to those in Arizona. I was very familiar with that kind of landscape and strangely felt at home with doing work there. The work envisioned for Wadi AlFann will have two large Skyspaces and two small Skyspaces, that each address different aspects of sky. All of my Skyspaces engage the natural light of the area. The light quality in AlUla is of dry desert air with little moisture, which yields a light in the sky that is crisp and clear.
James Turrell
Michael Govan is the CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director at LACMA. Since coming to LACMA in 2006, he has overseen the transformation of the 20-acre campus with buildings by Renzo Piano and monumental artworks by Ai Weiwei, Chris Burden, Michael Heizer, Robert Irwin, Barbara Kruger, Yoshitomo Nara, and others.
At LACMA, Govan has pursued his vision of contemporary artists and architects interacting with the museum’s historical collections, as evidenced by exhibition and gallery designs as well as programming in collaboration with artists and architects.
Currently, the museum is in the process of building a new, state-of-the-art permanent collection building designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Peter Zumthor. Under his leadership, LACMA has acquired nearly 44,000 works, building and expanding its collection of more than 150,000 works of art from Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Pacific.
This exhibition is located in two spaces in AlJadidah Arts District, the historic old town of AlUla and is part of the AlUla Arts Festival, which runs from 16 January to 22 February 2025.
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