Miwon Kwon

  • Digital rendering of James Turrell’s Aten Reign, 2013, a site-specific installation for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Renderings: Andreas Tjeldflaat.
    interviews May 2013

    1000 WORDS: JAMES TURRELL

    LIGHT MAKES VISION POSSIBLE yet paradoxically remains beyond our vision most of the time. Changing this “beyond” condition of light into a proximate and bodily experience has been James Turrell’s artistic objective for almost fifty years. From relatively small gallery-based light projections that create the appearance of floating planes or cubes (Afrum-Proto, 1966; Decker, 1967) to one-person booths or apparatuses that invite individuals to experience concentrated doses of sensory stimulation (the Perceptual Cells, including Alien Exam, 1989; Close Call, 1992; Gasworks, 1993; and Bindu Shards,

  • View of “Francis Alÿs: Politics of Rehearsal,” 2007–2008, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2007. Photo: Joshua White.
    print February 2008

    Francis Alÿs

    THE COVER OF THE CATALOGUE for Francis Alÿs’s exhibition at the Hammer Museum announces “rehearsal” as the show’s organizing principle in more ways than one. Of course, the exhibition’s title, “Politics of Rehearsal,” is prominent. But it is the graphic treatment that signals the show’s status as one version among many potential others: An adaptation of the familiar Hollywood movie clapboard, the cover features a slatelike background and handwritten words (FRANCIS ALŸS for DIRECTOR, POLITICS OF REHEARSAL as the TAKE) overwriting what look like white chalk smudges of erased prior takes. The