An Ultra Light Summer Season

Guess Who's Back...For Now

In terms of art, summer 2013 belonged to James Turrell. That summer, three American art museums: The Guggenheim New York, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted concurrent exhibitions of his work. Turrell's immersive installations, which harness light through geometric shapes like rectangles, triangles, and ellipses, feel like magic. Not the kind of magic that seems so beyond the scope of possibility that you have to know how they pull it off, but rather subtle magic that rewards faith over understanding. 

In the 1960s, Turrell began his artistic practice to get people to investigate how we see. Even back then, there was an idea afoot that modern life had become so image-saturated that people lacked the patience and rigor to read visually. Turrell's installations represent a desire to overcome this obstacle by bringing viewers into the work of art. His use of light is quite literal in that it is the element that illuminates the world and allows us to see. By engulfing people in light, they would have no escape from looking. In a Turrell, the artist wants you to "see yourself seeing." It's all very meta. 

James Turrell, Breathing Light, 2013, LED light into space, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

By the time of his summer museum take over, the world of visual culture had upped the ante on his work's proposition. Like Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms and Dan Flavin's installations of colored fluorescent light tubes, Turrell's work swiftly became about seeing yourself being seen seeing. Because Turrell's work lacks a tangible object and because it looks cool, it feels tailor-made for the Instagram age. The shared photograph replaces the museum gift shop souvenir and raises, even if only superficially, one's own cultural capital. 

I spent the summer of 2013 living within walking distance to the Guggenheim but never going to the Turrell exhibition. The prospect of getting a ticket, standing in line, and crowding into the museum's rotunda with a bunch of art selfie-hungry strangers didn't seem like a version of myself that I needed to see myself seeing. A few summers later, I visited a Turrell skyspace called The Color Inside in Austin, Texas. Over the years, Turrell has created several skyspaces throughout the world. His website describes them like this: 

chambers with an aperture in the ceiling open to the sky. The simple act of witnessing the sky from within a Turrell Skyspace, notably at dawn and dusk, reveals how we internally create the colors we see and thus, our perceived reality. 

On a warm Friday evening, I entered The Color Inside at sunset with about eight other people. We were encouraged to get comfortable and take pictures discreetly to not disturb the experience of our fellow visitors. As the sun began to set, colored lights shined on the walls and mixed with the natural light from the ceiling to create a dazzling show. As the wall colors shifted from forest green to lemon yellow to lilac, the reactions of my skyspace cohorts ranged from gasping to declaring the colors "beautiful," and from one younger visitor, "damn, this is just like the Drake video." 

Exterior aerial view of The Color Inside

My response, which I chalk up to my Cancer rising sign, was to cry. And even though my tears were happy, they surprised me. The work consisted of nothing more than light but the stripping away of objects, focus, and a subject matter left me with only my thoughts and feelings. My tracking of the changing colors slowly gave way to an overwhelming sense of gratitude. In addition to light, the element of time is key to understanding Turrell's work. You have to sit in the art for a while to watch it take shape and form and then reform itself and you. 

Me inside The Color Inside

As we start another summer, I find myself full of gratitude once again. Thankful that we get to go back to singing familiar songs like hugging friends, listening to live music, traveling without the threat of becoming seriously ill, and crying in the presence of beauty with strangers (maybe that's just me). I can't wait to see all the colors we missed last year.   

Summer Recommendations: 

Now I will offer my recommendations for art viewing this summer. The selected cities mirror the locations of those of you who have responded to my previous newsletter questions. I'm highlighting ONE exhibition from each place here because those Bravo shows aren't going to watch themselves, but if you'd like more, suggestions email me. Also, feel free to leave your own suggestions in the comments section. 

New Orleans

What: Outside In, Improvisations of Space The Ceramic Work of Mapo Kinnard 

Where: Ogden Museum 

When: Through July 18, 2021 

Why: An overdue solo exhibition for an artist who morphs clay into shapes where, as the exhibition title suggests, the negative space around the resulting sculptures is equally as important as the work itself. 

New York

What: Off the Record 

Where: The Guggenheim 

When: Through September 27, 2021 

Why: Off the Record, a group exhibition featuring work from the museum's collection used to examine how documents shape our understanding of history. 

Brooklyn

What: Lorraine O'Grady: Both/And

Where: Brooklyn Museum 

When: Through July 18, 2021

Why: O'Grady's retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum includes twelve projects from the prolific artist who has used her work to explore her own cultural background and ideas about feminism. 

Washington DC Area 

What: Glenstone 

Where: Potomac so not actually the District, but oh well 

When: Visitors Choice 

Why: If you're in the area (Christina), I would say run, don't walk to the Glenstone. As SNL's/Bill Hader's Stefon might say, "this place has everything." The outdoor sculpture area features works by Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Serra, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and more. The interior galleries are filled with work by some of the best contemporary artists like Glenn Ligon, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson, Lawrence Weiner, Cy Twombly, and more. 

Columbus, OH 

What: Present Generations: Creating the Scantland Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art

Where: Columbus Museum of Art 

When: through May 22, 2022 

Why: This month, The Columbus Museum of Art announced that the Scantland family, whose money appears to come from advertising, would donate 27 works of art by emerging and mid-career artists. The gift included works by artists like Deana Lawson, Jerrell Gibbs, Hilary Pecis, and many more. It is worth considering how this early museum acquisition will impact these artists' market and career trajectories. 

Atlanta

What: Underexposed: Women Photographers From the Collection 

Where: High Museum 

When: through August 1, 2021

Why: This exhibition takes its starting point from the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and offers a chronological exploration of how women captured a changing society through photography. 

Houston: 

What: Monet to Matisse: Impressionism to Modernism from the Bemberg Foundation 

Where: MFA Houston 

When: June 27 - September 19, 2021 

Why: Georges Bemberg, a patron of the arts, collected works by canonical artists like Degas, Cezanne, Matisse, and Monet. Even though we know the old Eurocentric version of art history is played out, there is still something to be said for seeing art that helped to usher in our modern aesthetic in person. 

The Extras: 

Light and Space Movement: James Turrell is often associated with the West Coast art movement from the 1960s and 70s. More on that here. 

James Turrell: In the late 1970s, Turrell purchased a dormant volcano in Arizona's Painted Desert and has been working tirelessly to turn it into a naked-eye observatory. Watch a short video about the Roden Crater here. 

Drake: The rapper Drake Instagrammed a series of snapshots visiting the Turrell retrospective at LACMA. He captioned one of the posts "Turrell x OVO" for the uninitiated OVO stands for October's Very Own, Drake's record label. After linking his brand to Turrell's, Drake paid homage to the artist by stealing his whole aesthetic for the Hotline Bling video. 

Click here to read Turrell's light (get it) hearted response to the video. 

Kanye West: West is a big Turrell fan expressing a desire to live in one of his installations. And the feeling appears to be mutual; for his part, Turrell drew up the plans for a Turrell x West home. No word on the size of the pool. West also famously donated $10 million to the Roden Crater. Among several questionable things he's done since linking up with the Kardashian family, he introduced his ex-half-sister-in-law to Turrell's work. She was featured on the cover of Architectural Digest with a piece by Turrell hanging in the entryway to her home with the lead "Kendall Jenner Finds Her Light." Did she find it, or did Kanye find it for her? You decide.   

A section of the Roden Crater. Image Source: The Telegraph.

Housekeeping: 

I wouldn't blame you if you'd thought I'd given up on this newsletter, given my unannounced and prolonged hiatus. But the truth is I've been both busy and uninspired. So for the summer, I am shifting to a surprise newsletter schedule. Expect to see See Level in your inbox sporadically. I'll switch to a bi-weekly schedule in the fall, and we'll continue on this journey together. 

Thank you for reading and happy summer!