James Turrell Almost Stole a Painting by Juan Gris

Henri Neuendorf | artnet news | 2nd May 2016

Why would an artist focus their art on the mixing and projecting of light? Turrell responds that light as an artistic raw material is no more difficult than sound.  Interest in the perception of light has an honourable ancestry – Turner, the Impressionists, Rothko. “[I]t’s just that I didn’t want to depict light, I wanted to use light itself.” Or, as one critic put it, Turrell’s art “happens behind your eyes, not in front of them”.