James Turrell’s Largest ‘Skyspace’ Touches Down at ARoS Aarhus in Denmark
The 100th installation in his landmark series.
Summary
- James Turrell unveiled a new Skyspace installation, “As Seen Below – The Dome,” at the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Denmark
- The artwork turns sky-gazing into a surreal act, altering one’s perception of light and the color spectrum
- It marks the 100th in the artist’s landmark series and inaugurates the museum’s new expansion
Light is something just as felt as it is seen for James Turrell, the artist known for gracing the world with his perceptually playful and deeply immersive installations. This tangibility of light, something he calls its “thingness,” has become a defining feature of his site-specific Skyspaces. And even 50 years on, whether you’re in the desert, the heart of New York, or hitting sub-0° in Scandinavia, the series never fails to mesmerize.
The artist recently unveiled “As Seen Below – The Dome” at the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Denmark, marking the largest — and most ambitious — Skyspace of his career and the 100th entry in the landmark series. At 16 meters tall and 40 meters in diameter, the piece takes Turrell’s explorations to new heights, making for a fitting centerpiece of ARoS’ new Schmidt Hammer Lassen-designed expansion. Embedded beneath a grassy mound rising from the museum’s park, visitors emerge into the subterranean structure from a corridor that connects to ARoS’ main building.
As with previous Skyspaces, the “As Seen Below” turns the act of seeing into the art itself. Over 1,100 LEDs soak the space in shifting washes of color, altering the viewers’ experience of the sky, which can be seen through a patch framed by the dome’s circular aperture overhead. For this Danish iteration, Turrell also took cues from the region’s Northern Lights, translating their elusive chromatic shifts into surreal sensory environments during sunrise and sunset.
“This fascination with light has never left me. I did not want to use light to reveal things,” the artist said. “I wanted light to be the revelation itself. I wanted to experience the thingness of light itself, to feel it, to bathe in it.”
“As Seen Below – The Dome” is now on view in Denmark. Check out the museum’s website to book your tickets today.
