RODEN CRATER, 1995 // CRATER’S EYE, 2007 // SUN AND MOON SPACE, 2006 // JAMES TURRELL’S RODEN CRATER, 2013

Turrell, an avid pilot who has logged over twelve thousand hours flying, considers the sky as his studio, material and canvas.
James Turrell, introduction

In 1977, American artist James Turrell bought a site in Northern Arizona; the roughly 400,000 year old, 600 foot tall red and black cinder cone is being turned into a monumental work of art: a naked eye observatory. When complete, the project will contain 21 viewing spaces and six tunnels, each dedicated to the observation and experience of specific atmospheric phenomena. The construction of Roden Crater started in 1979 and according to Turrell came at the price of two marriages and a relationship. In Up in the Air we present three photographs of the Roden Crater site, together with two models from spaces within the Roden Crater complex: Crater’s Eye and Sun and Moon Space. In the Sun and Moon Space, for instance, images of the sun and moon fall on to the surface of a large basalt stone called the ‘image stone.’. Leading up from that stone is an approximately 900-foot tunnel that leads to a portal, an opening to the sky. The 900-foot tunnel acts as a giant refractor telescope and contains a very large lens at the centre to focus the light.

The short film James Turell’s Roden Crater, produced by Erin Wright for the Turrell retrospective in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2013-2014, further provides insight into the motives of Turrell and attempts to capture the experience of walking through Roden Crater on camera.

More info about Roden Crater
More info about James Turrell’s Roden Crater film

James Turrell (US)
°1943, Los Angeles

James Turrell is an American visual artist, living and working from Arizona, USA. He is mostly known for his sculptures and installations exploring the relationship between light and space. He has been designing and building ‘skyspaces’ throughout the world since the 1970s and continues to develop his ultimate naked eye celestial observatory complex, Roden Crater, in Northern Arizona. 

Turrell studied perceptual psychology at Pomona College (1965), and art at the University of California, Irvine (1966) and Claremont Graduate School (MA, 1973). He is represented by a myriad of galleries amongst which Almine Rech Gallery, Gagosian Gallery and Pace Gallery.