James Turrell: A Retrospective

The artist, James Turrell, has been actively creating artwork since the mid 1960’s, in which light and three dimensional space interact in ways that challenge conventional perception. The Retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art encompasses 30,000SF, including 11 exhibits on the full second floor of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) and 5 exhibits within the Resnick Pavilion. The exhibits range in size from the 9SF Magnatron, which is viewed through a small aperture, to the 5,500SF Ganzfeld, a design-build engineered structure constructed within the museum building, which visitors fully enter in order to experience the space and lighting as a complete environment.
Building spaces which are themselves the art, and doing so on a tight schedule, was a challenging endeavor. From planning and permitting, to coordination and construction, creative problem solving was needed every step of the way. Our construction team, together with James Turrell, developed the techniques required to create these unique spaces, which, through their absolute precision in surface texture, almost disappear within a bath of diffused light. The meeting of coves and flat surfaces with no telegraphing of the junctures, and no apparent texture or surface irregularity, are key to achieving the artist’s effect.
Through teamwork and diligent coordination of a host of issues from existing building infrastructure, to LED and fiber optic lighting controls, to the fine detailing of all elements of the project, Taslimi Construction brought a level of resolution and precision to the exhibits that allows the work of the artist to come to the fore and the complexities of the construction to recede, which is what defines the success of this particular project.