james turrell,
Avaar

CAS inaugurates its second-floor exhibition space with a multi-year presentation of James Turrell’s Avaar from 1982. Turrell is an iconic figure in contemporary art who describes his medium as light and space. Avaar is an immersive, room-sized installation that explores Turrell’s ideas about light, the act of perception, and the physical awareness of both space and place.

An important example of Turrell’s early, wall-based “aperture” works, Avaar consists of two areas within a room: the “viewing space” where one stands to see and experience the work, and the “sensing space,” which is an ambiguously defined area of diffused light. The optical effects of the installation reward extended, meditative looking as viewers become attuned to the effect of the “sensing space” as the artist intends. 

Avaar is one of the rare examples of Turrell’s aperture works to make use of white lighting only; no colors will be present in the installation. This work is in the collection of the Seattle Art Museum, which has granted CAS a special long-term loan to exhibit the work. The presentation at CAS marks the first time the work has been shown in nearly four decades.

About the Artist

James Turrell (b. 1943, Los Angeles) creates often unclassifiable work that examines the perceptual effects of light, color, and space in a range of forms across more than five decades of practice. This singular approach to art making is influenced by many unique aspects of his personal biography, from his Quaker upbringing in California, to his later studies in mathematics and psychology, and his one-time career as a pilot and an aerial cartographer. 

Turrell’s work—particularly his immersive and luminous light- and color-drenched installations—has become increasingly recognized in the field of contemporary art, and his prominence reached new heights in 2013, when he was honored with a three-part retrospective shown simultaneously at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in Texas. He is perhaps best known as the creator of contemporary art’s greatest unfinished masterpiece, Roden Crater, a large-scale artwork created within a dormant volcano located in the Arizona desert, which he has been developing since 1977. 

We can host up to 8 people at a time for 15 minute sessions in the installation. Reservations are recommended. Children under the age of 6 are not permitted.