INSPIRE THE LIGHT – JAMES TURRELL

For its 2016 summer season, the Venet Foundation featured two works by the American artist James Turrell.

The first work is entitled Elliptic, Ecliptic, and belongs to a series of Skyspaces, buildings (in this case oval-shaped) in which viewers are invited to take a seat and observe the sky through a narrow space freed of all visual pollution and illuminated by a device that the artist conceals in the structure.

The second work, Prana, was put on view in the Contemporary Gallery, which was designed by architects Berthier and Llamata. The piece consists of a space that is hermetically sealed off from all exterior light. At the end of this space can be seen a red rectangle that actually conceals its exact nature, and where all notions of space melt away in a kind of abyss clouded by a flaming red hue that suggests the inside of a seething volcano.

In the Usine (Factory), the Foundation presented early mathematical works on canvas and wall reliefs by Venet, while his Saturations were shown on the Gallery walls. Pieces by Gottfried Honegger and François Morellet, friends of Venet’s, were also exhibited in an homage, following their death in 2016.