James Turrell
«Reflections on Light»
Häusler Contemporary Zürich (CH)

Exhibition:
June 13 – September 30, 2025 

With «Reflections on Light», Häusler Contemporary Zürich presents a curated selection of works by James Turrell (b.1943, Los Angeles), one of the most pioneering artists in contemporary art, whose practice has redefined the relationship between light, space, and perception since the late 1960s. The exhibition brings together historic works on paper, a new glass sculpture, and recent light installations to trace Turrell’s enduring investigation of light as an autonomous artistic medium.

The exhibition opens with a group of significant works on paper, which illuminate the conceptual and formal foundations of Turrell’s oeuvre. The eight-part suite «Still Light» (1990–91) refers back to Turrell’s early projection pieces in 1967. In these early works, Turrell began shaping space with precisely defined cones of projected light, constructing volumes of luminosity that existed independently of material form. The «Still Light» aquatint etchings translate this early exploration of immaterial form into the two-dimensional realm, extending his investigation into the conditions of visual perception. Produced in Zurich in close collaboration with printer Peter Kneubühler, they mark a pivotal moment in Turrell’s adaptation of experiential light phenomena into the language of printmaking.


Extending this engagement, the four aquatint etchings «Squat», «Juke», «Carn» and «Alta» (1990)—published by the influential art journal Parkett —echoe the artist’s interest in diagram and score, revealing the underlying geometry and spatial strategy behind his immersive installations. With their combination of abstraction and specificity, the Parkett works provide an essential key to understanding how Turrell choreographs light as an active force within architectural volumes.

This trajectory—from projected light to architectural environment—finds one of its most ambitious expressions in «From the Guggenheim, Aten Reign» (2013), an unique three-part inkjet print documenting Turrell’s landmark transformation of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda in New York. In «Aten Reign», Turrell temporarily reconfigured Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic spiraling atrium into a vast chamber of concentric color and slowly shifting light. The work suspended viewers in an optical field that was at once celestial and bodily—an embodiment of Turrell’s belief that perception itself is the site of art.

At the center of the exhibition stands «Roden Crater along the Summer Solstice axis» (2024), a new gold-glass sculpture referencing Turrell’s monumental land art project in the Arizona desert. «Roden Crater», a dormant volcano transformed into a naked-eye observatory, is Turrell’s life work and a synthesis of cosmology, architecture, and perceptual art. The sculpture compresses celestial movement into a material object that glows with quiet, internal luminosity.

The exhibition culminates in two recent light installations: The Small Elliptical Glass «First Cause» (2024) and the Tall Glass «Singularity» (2024). These works represent Turrell’s most refined articulation of light as substance. They generate a sense of infinite depth and slow temporality, echoing the artist’s long-standing interest in perception as a durational, bodily experience.

In «Reflections on Light», Turrell’s work unfolds not as a linear progression but as a sustained meditation on vision itself. Through print, sculpture, and installation, the exhibition invites viewers to enter a world in which light is not illumination, but a presence—quiet, expansive, and radically perceptual.

Under this link you will find further available works by the artist.
Under this link you will find an Artnet Article on the current exhibition.