The Color Inside
I forget how mesmerizing the slow color shifts are at The Color Inside, James Turrell's Skyspace located at the University of Texas. While looking for a video on my phone, I stumbled upon this real-time video of a March 2015 visit to the Skyspace, capturing a brief 40 seconds of the transition from a vibrant green to bright white light during the sunrise sequence. Turrell's spatial, light-based installations are based on visual perception - by manipulating color, light (both artificial and natural), and perceived depth, the viewer experiences visual shifts from what actually exists.
The Color Inside has a simple form - an extruded plaster ellipse sits on one of the roof terraces of the University's Student Activities Center, intersecting with a dark zinc-clad box. Inside is the viewing space; basalt benches ring the interior of the ellipse. The dark stone of the benches turns up the wall to about 10 feet and then becomes plaster, which very simply ensures the focus is on the space above - smooth, curving white walls become a flat horizontal plane with a sharp knife-edge elliptical opening framing the sky. The framed sky within the open-air Skyspace is certainly special - with a day-lit sky, the bright white walls appear grey and the sky becomes impossibly vibrant, in blues or greys etc., the colors changing with the sun, weather, clouds, and time passing. A bright, perfectly sharp ring of sunlight pierces the space at times. The real pleasure, however, occurs when the interior is flooded with Turrell's signature use of deep, saturated color during a lighting sequence that runs at sunrise and sunset.
Each sequence lasts about 90 minutes, and is meticulously, specifically programmed for color selection, transition, and duration. The sunrise sequence is timed to begin in darkness, one hour before the sunrise and ends with the sun fully up (I believe the timing of the sunset sequence is done in reverse), and runs daily. The SAC center is not actually open for the sunrise sequence, but I have been lucky enough to experience two through work. The sequence begins in darkness, eyes accustomed to barely there lighting. Color begins to wash the ceiling and walls, transitioning from one vibrant hue to another. Your eyes adjust to one color and then a slow change to the next, and the sky in the oculus beyond begins to change color as the sun rises - you are fooled into seeing a sky that is black or orange or green or yellow, etc. - colors other than "sky blue." The framed sky appears impossibly deep or impossibly flat, based on the color of the light on the ceiling and the amount of sunlight outside, both floating or set deeply in colored space. It is an incredible experience that challenges perception. During the two sequences I have seen, my fellow viewers (and myself) go from breathless silence to delighted exclamations of wonder, of the effects on the sky, and the colors they see.
I have also visited the Twilight Epiphany Skyspace on Rice University's campus for the Sunset sequence. There are some significant differences in the architecture of this installation that give it a completely different feel from the Austin Skyspace. Twilight Epiphany is very photogenic - it is an exuberant "pavilion in a park," easily identifiable, bombastic with joyful color bleeding onto the manicured campus lawn, and has a great white knife-edged roof stretching out like a slick sharp taut paper sheet. As the interior and exterior form and oculus of the Austin Skyspace is an ellipse, the Houston Skyspace is a square. Just like the architecture, the experience is as much about the exterior display as it is the view from the interior, with a second viewing level ringing the first, set within built-up ground. Not only can the color sequence be viewed from the interior and this secondary ring, but it is also visible from any point in the surrounding lawn. The Color Inside is quiet as its spatial opposite - the architecture and experience is intensely and internally focused, with no color change visible on the exterior except from above. The Skyspace is even hidden on a rooftop; simply finding it is part of the experience.
Personal opinion? I find The Color Inside to be a much more powerful experience - it is more intimate, with a greater focus on individual perception. I found the corners of square oculus distracting; it was as if the color had a place to break, rather than transition smoothly around the sky. The elliptical form of The Color Inside seemed to enhance my shifting perception of color and space during the sequence as stretched walls and oculus grew and shrank with the color. It was an energizing and contemplative way to begin the day - I need to carve out time to attend the sunset sequence on a future visit to Texas.
Note 1a: A third Texas Skyspace is currently inaccessible - Turrell's Tending, (Blue) installation at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas has been "declared destroyed" by Turrell, due to a new residential high rise that is visible within its square, knife edged oculus, and reflected glare off of it's extensively glazed facade that affects the light in the space. This new high rise is is the Museum Tower, which has been at the center of continuous controversy on many different levels since it's construction and completion in 2013. Although a large, vertical screen has been designed to mitigate the offending additions, it has not yet been installed and this particular Skyspace remains publicly closed, although you can stroll around its exterior which is set within the earth at the perimeter of the outdoor sculpture garden. I was lucky enough to see the installation before its closure on a trip with students from the University of Houston in 2010 - although, as we visited in the middle of the day, I missed the color sequences.
Note 1b: The actual museum building, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, also suffers greatly from amount of light reflected off of the 40-story Museum Tower, which significantly increases the intensity, heat, and exposure that both interior and exterior art (and vegetation) is subjected to. Piano's elegant, light filtering baffles that form the celebrated roof and ceiling structure of the Nasher were not designed for the high level of brash reflection. Design options have been discussed, with no movement at this time.
Note 2: I have also visited Turrell's The Light Inside installation at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, although my rushed trip (in grad school) through the celebrated tunnel was done from back to front - I need to re-visit and experience it properly (in the correct sequence), although hopefully with the same joyful experience and juicy, light-filled sensory memory as my first harried time.
Note 3: Turrell's influence extends to pop culture; Drake's 2015 song, "Hotline Bling," directly references (or is heavily "inspired" or "influenced" by) Turrell's work. Turrell's perfect response is here.
