James Turrell's desire is to "create beautiful scenes for people to see and be memorable for the rest of their lives." and he did.

Born in Los Angeles in 1943, James Turrell's fascination with the sky led him to obtain his pilot's license at the age of 16. In 1965, he earned a degree in perceptual psychology from Pomona University, where he also became interested in mathematics, geography, and astronomy before attending the University of California to study art. All of these experiences are the cornerstones of his artwork, which led him to choose the medium of light for his unique exploration of perceptual art, dedicating his practice to expanding people's sensory experience of space, color, and intuition. Since 1966, Turrell has been a leading figure in the "Light and Space" movement, adopting a combination of materials and devices such as vortex dynamics, sunlight, ultraviolet light, electric light, fluorescent light, and LEDs to realize his light sculptures and materialization of natural light.

In 1974, he discovered the Roden Crater on the edge of the colorful Painted Desert in Arizona, USA. Since then, he has been working on transforming this extinct volcano's interior into a place where light interacts, an observatory of the universe with naked eyes. It's a grand project that has yet to complete today but continues to appeal to everyone. Kanye West has been an avid fan of James Turrell, who not only filmed the movie JESUS IS KING in the Roden Crater, but also donated $10 million dollars to the project. The Roden Grater Project, ongoing for more than a decade, is one of the world's most expensive public art projects.

Besides transforming natural spaces, Turrell is also keen on reforming and exploring architectural spaces. When he was commissioned by the Guggenheim museum to work with Frank Lloyd Wright's unique design, he turned the museum's entire gyrating space into colorful light sculptures that reconfigure as the viewer moves around. These works were installed on the walls in ovals and circles, and frosted glass surfaces activated by technologically advanced LED lights, in which visual nuances are generated by computer programming. The changes in light are subtle and hypnotic; one color gradually turns into another. The art critic for the New Yorker, Calvin Tomkins, commented, "His work is not just about light or capturing light; his work is light - light in the form of perception, the actual light.

James Turrell's artworks are found in public spaces around the world. Unlike a conventional sculpture or painting, each one of his artworks demands considering its context as it fully manifests its site-specificity. In 1986, Turrell presented Meeting, his first “Skyspace" work in America, to the public at the Museum of Modern Art PS1 in New York. Thereon, he’s completed nearly 100 “Skyspaces” works in cities worldwide. Among them, Gathered Sky - permanently installed in China - is located at the East Jingyuan Temple (Zhizhu Temple), where one can appreciate its installation at sunset. From sunset to dusk, through a rectangular skylight on the roof, one can observe the sky's transient colors as perceptions of the virtual/real interplays. He remarks on this series, "Only such a structure can point to and amplify human perception with a particular kind of feedback."

Turrell, who is profoundly inspired by Mark Rothko, hopes to take people into a purely spiritual world through his work. As he puts it, "There are no objects, no images, and no focus in my work. What you are looking at is your act of viewing. For me, it's important to create an experience that silences words."

James Turrell

James Turrell (b. 1943, Los Angeles), associated with the Light and Space Movement initiated in the 1960s, has dedicated his practice to what he has deemed perceptual art, investigating the immaterial qualities of light. Influenced by the notion of pure feeling in pictorial art, Turrell’s earliest work focused on the dialectic between constructing light and painting with it, building on the sensorial experience of space, color, and perception. Since his earliest Projection Pieces (1966–69), his exploration has expanded through various series, including Skyspaces (1974–), Ganzfelds (1976–), and perhaps most notably, his Roden Crater Project (1977–), a large-scale work in a volcanic cinder cone in the Painted Desert region of northern Arizona. Turrell’s practice has also materialized in small-scale works, including architectural models, holograms, and works on paper.