James Turrell: The Return @ Pace Gallery, Seoul

James Turrell: The Return

Pace Gallery, Seoul

June 14 - September 27, 2025

James Turrell 

After Effect, 2022 

© James Turrell, courtesy Pace Gallery

Pace presents an exhibition of five recent installations by James Turrell—including a new, never-before-seen, site-specific Wedgework made specifically for this presentation—at its Seoul gallery. Spanning all three floors of the gallery, The Return also features a selection of photographs and works on paper that shed light on the artist’s process for his installations and the construction of his massive Roden Crater project. Marking Turrell’s first solo exhibition in Seoul since 2008, this show is organized as part of Pace’s 65th anniversary year celebration, during which the gallery is mounting exhibitions around the world of work by major artists with whom it has maintained decades-long relationships. 

Born in Los Angeles in 1943, James Turrell is a key member of the California Light and Space movement. He has dedicated his practice to what he has deemed “perceptual art,” working with the materiality of light and space. Influenced by the notion of pure feeling in pictorial art, Turrell’s earliest work focused on the dialectic between constructing light and painting with light, building on the sensorial experience of space, color, and perception. Since his Projection Pieces from the 1960s, his work with light and perception has expanded in various series, including his Skyspaces, which he began creating in 1974, and his Ganzfelds, which he initiated in 1976.

Today, the artist is known worldwide for his immersive installations that, he says, require “seeing yourself seeing.” His work can be found in major museum collections around the globe, including the Museum SAN in Wonju, Korea, which is home to five of his installations; the Bonte Museum on Jeju Island in South Korea; the Chichu Art Museum on Naoshima Island in Japan; the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra; the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum in New York; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among many others. With his monumental, ongoing Roden Crater project near Flagstaff, Arizona, James Turrell is forging a large-scale artwork and naked-eye observatory within a dormant volcanic cinder cone in the landscape of the Painted Desert of Northern Arizona.

Arne Glimcher, Pace’s Founder and Chairman, first met James Turrell some 60 years ago, and the gallery has represented him since 2002. The artist’s presentation in Seoul—his first ever solo show at Pace’s space in the Korean capital—is an ode to the longevity of his relationship with Arne Glimcher and Pace. The Return includes a new, never-before-exhibited Wedgework installation—in which planes of projected light intersect within a darkened room, lending light a “thingness” through which the room seems to expand beyond its physical limits—made by James Turrell this year. Also featured are two large, curved glass installations, a circular glass installation, and a diamond-shaped glass installation. In these pieces from the Glassworks series, shifting planes of light give the illusion of infinite depth. Rarely exhibited together, these Glassworks of different sizes and dimensions are installed throughout the Seoul gallery, offering visitors a special opportunity to experience the breadth of the artist’s recent work.

The works on paper complementing these installations, which the artist has been producing over the course of his career, speak to the importance of printmaking in Turrell’s practice. At Pace in Seoul, he is showing his new series of Wedgework prints, which explore the chromatic variations and formal possibilities of the Wedgework installations. Works related to the artist’s Roden Crater project also figure prominently in the exhibition, alongside aquatints and woodcuts that depict qualities of light in Turrell’s 2014 installation Aten Reign at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Artist James Turrell

James Turrell, 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.

PACE GALLERY SEOUL

267 Itaewon-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul

www.pacegallery.com

Wade Kramm, Howard Schwartzberg, Susan Silas @ Catskill Art Space, Livingston Manor, NY + Long-term Installations of James Turrell, Sol LeWitt, Francis Cape, Ellen Brooks

Wade Kramm, Howard Schwartzberg, Susan Silas 

Catskill Art Space, Livingston Manor

Through June 21, 2025

Catskill Art Space (CAS) presents an exhibition of work by Wade Kramm, Howard Schwartzberg, and Susan Silas. 

WADE KRAMM

© Wade Kramm

WADE KRAMM's Wall Fragments jolt perception and manipulate space by strategically placing mirror-like portals on the gallery's walls, floors, and corners. These perceived architectural realities made from building materials (such as drywall, molding, floorboards, and doors) expand our perceptual awareness while also making us cognizant of the perceptual process we use when constructing the world by looking at it. Standing in front of each piece, the phenomenological experience fluctuates between simply seeing the materials as materials and a perceptual/physical engagement with the new spaces within the surrounding architecture. Kramm's art explores Minimalism, architecture, and perception to reshape the viewer's engagement with the gallery space.

WADE KRAMM is an installation artist based in New York and Pittsburgh. His work has been exhibited at Piero Atchugarry Gallery (Pueblo Garzon, Uruguay), Tapir Gallery (Berlin, Germany), Cue Art Foundation (New York, NY), Odetta Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Space 776 (Brooklyn, NY), Sammer Gallery (New York, NY), Concept Gallery (Pittsburgh, PA), Esther M. Klein Art Gallery (Philadelphia, PA); Athens Contemporary Museum of Art (Athens, GA); Expo Chicago (Chicago, IL), and Art Project Fair (Verona, Italy). Wade Kramm received his M.F.A. in sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI.

HOWARD SCHWARTZBERG

© Howard Schwartzberg

HOWARD SCHWARTZBERG presents work that explores his evolving language of painting, investigating how canvas and paint interact beyond traditional illusion. Rejecting conventional rectangular formats, he seeks to expand the painting's possibilities by questioning its structure and presentation. His process, influenced by reverse brainstorming and a respect for art history, involves repurposing existing visual languages to uncover new creative directions. Through this approach, he challenges material boundaries, embracing painting as an exploration of space, time, and transformation rather than mere image-making.

HOWARD SCHWARTZBERG was born in 1965 in Coney Island, Brooklyn. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, and his Master's in Education from the University of New England, Maine. Schwartzberg began showing work in 1990 at The Drawing Center and Stux Gallery. He has had solo exhibitions at Momenta Art, Silverstein Gallery, Dorsky Gallery, and most recently at the Private Public Gallery in Hudson, NY. After twenty years of focusing on art-making with Education, in 2020, Howard Schwartzberg retired from the NYC Public School System, and In 2016, he began making his paintings again.

SUSAN SILAS

© Susan Silas

After delivering a eulogy for her mother, SUSAN SILAS considered how she would be eulogized and what ideas and entities outlive us. Susan Silas has created work that responds to contemporary concepts of immortality, particularly Whole Brain Emulation, which proposes uploading human consciousness to an inorganic substrate—an idea largely discussed by men and based on the assumption that mind and body can be separated. To explore this, she created an avatar to house her hypothetical brain upload and extended the concept into three sculptures in the form of manipulated busts of her likeness. The works are a long-standing inquiry into embodiment and how technology reshapes our understanding of selfhood.

SUSAN SILAS has had recent solo exhibitions at The University of Kentucky Art Museum, Koli Art Space in Istanbul, Studio 10 in Bushwick, and CB1 in Los Angeles, as well as group exhibitions, including BIENALSUR 2024, Cuvo 2023 in Spain, CURRENTS 2021 in Santa Fe, and WRO2021 REVERSO in Wroclaw, Poland in 2020, along with shows at Wasserman Projects in Detroit, bitforms gallery in New York, and Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken in Germany. She has also participated in recent panels sponsored by Horasis USA, The Wiener Holocaust Library in London, and the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge.

+ Long-term Installations at Catskill Art Space 

Following a major renovation and expansion, Catskill Art Space reopened in October 2022 with a long-term presentation of JAMES TURRELL’s Avaar (1982) in a custom-built gallery on the building’s second floor. A room-sized installation, Avaar is an important example of the artist’s early, wall-based “aperture” works, which function by creating two areas within a room. There is a “viewing space,” where one stands to see and experience the work, and a “sensing space,” which is an ambiguously defined area of diffused light. Avaar is one of the rare examples of Turrell’s aperture works to make use of white lighting only; no colors will be present in the installation. This work is in the collection of the Seattle Art Museum, which has granted CAS a special long-term loan to exhibit the work. The presentation at CAS marks the first time the work has been shown since the 1970s, giving audiences from the Catskills and beyond the rare opportunity to experience a major Turrell work that has not been seen in nearly five decades.

On the second floor’s central landing, SOL LEWITT’s vibrant Wall Drawing #992 unfolds in three sections, each consisting of 10,000 straight lines drawn in color marker, to create a mesmerizing arrangement of primary colors. On the fourth wall, presenting LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #991, straight, arced, and organic lines will encompass the wall in black marker and pencil. The conceptual, minimalist artist conceived guidelines for his two-dimensional works to be drawn directly on the wall. Much like Turrell’s Avaar, the LeWitt works were realized for CAS’s space; in this instance, they are generously loaned by the artist’s estate. This work was overseen by a draftsperson, who determines the length and placement of the lines, and executed by five artists local to the area over nearly two weeks.

The newly realized performance space on CAS’s second floor hosts British sculptor FRANCIS CAPE’s A Gathering of Utopian Benches—an installation of meticulous copies of benches built and used by communal societies. Cape’s installations have always argued that design and craft express belief. Utopian Benches, which has toured extensively throughout the US, was built from poplar grown near Cape’s studio in Narrowsburg, NY. To be considered both as contemporary sculpture as well as furniture that visitors can actively use, the benches reference the societies who first used them, inviting visitors to utilize them for exchange, discourse, and community. The installation, which is meant to be used by visitors both for contemplation and may be used for performance seating, overlooks an expansive wall of windows onto the Willowemoc Creek.

ELLEN BROOKS inaugurates an intimate gallery space, framed by a partially open staircase, with Hang (2022), an installation suspending over 30 feet of scrolls of film negatives from the ceiling. The artist hangs transparencies and negatives in all formats and from clips attached to the ceiling, mimicking the practice of film photography. Hanging negatives reference the surrounding natural landscaping, evoking a cascading waterfall with coils of film collecting on the ground floor gallery.

CATSKILL ART SPACE

48 Main Street, Livingston Manor, NY 12758

www.catskillartspace.org

Wade Kramm, Howard Schwartzberg, Susan Silas 

Catskill Art Space, Livingston Manor, May 3 - June 21, 2025

1960s Los Angeles ground-breaking art pratices – About the exhibition Primery Atmospheres at David Zwirner Gallery, NYC

Primary Atmospheres
Works from California 1960-1970
David Zwirner Gallery, New York
January 8 - February 6, 2010
 

DOUG WHEELER 

Untitled, 1969 

Acrylic, neon tubing, and wood. 91 1/2 x 91 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches. 

Courtesy David Zwirner Gallery, New York. 

About this work see the text at the end of the post.

Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970 will present to the New York public a long-overdue survey of the particular kind of minimal work that was made in and around Los Angeles, work which differentiated itself in its emphasis on surface, synthetic materials, industrial processes, and perception. Often referred to under the umbrella term “Light and Space,” the artists and artwork included in this exhibition will present a more inclusive overview of the ground-breaking and diverse art practices that flourished in California in the 1960s. The exhibition includes rarely seen works by Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Laddie John Dill, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John McCracken, Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, De Wain Valentine, and Doug Wheeler.

While most of the artworks included in the exhibition can be referred to as minimal in form, their seductive surfaces, often made out of nontraditional materials, and their luminescent use of color and light characterize them as uniquely Southern Californian. Distinguishing themselves from their East Coast Minimalist counterparts, the California artists in the exhibition were reacting to local concerns with light and atmosphere, often evoking the qualities of the bright Los Angeles sunlight and the shiny, finished surfaces of the city’s ubiquitous signs and automobiles. Noted for translucent, reflective, or ethereal surfaces, the work made by these artists explored the often ephemeral boundaries between painting and sculpture and the broader experiential possibilities of art. 

The works on view capture some of the more specific aesthetic qualities of the Los Angeles area during the 1960s, where certain cutting-edge industrial materials and technologies were being developed at that time. Many of the artists employed unconventional materials to create complex, highly-finished and meticulous objects that have become associated with the so-called “Finish Fetish” aesthetic. These artists were also influenced by the industrial paints applied to the surfaces of surfboards and cars, as well as the plastics of the aerospace industry. 
Artists such as De Wain Valentine, Helen Pashgian, and Peter Alexander experimented with casting polyester resin in different formats, creating works which explore the material’s ability to both contain and reflect light. PETER ALEXANDER’s Untitled (Window), 1968, which consists of a transparent blue wedge, explores the synthetic material’s qualities in relationship to color and luminosity, whereas HELEN PASHGIAN’s clear, geometric orbs (such as Untitled, 1968-69) deal with shifts in perspective and issues of translucency and perception. DE WAIN VALENTINE’s Triple Disk Red Metal Flake - Black Edge, 1966, uses fiberglass reinforced polyester to achieve beautiful tensions between exterior and interior spaces.

In a similar manner, the early “cubes” of LARRY BELL explore the relationship between the sculptural object and its surrounding environment. Creating perfect cubes made out of glass and metal (among them Untitled, 1966-67, and Untitled, 1969), Bell developed a delicate, vacuum-coating technique to achieve semi-reflective exteriors. The flawless surfaces of these works induce a mesmerizing range of perceptual experiences, simultaneously drawing the viewer inside the object and reflecting the surrounding environment.

LADDIE JOHN DILLL’s Untitled, 1969, employs glass in a distinct manner: supported by sand and illuminated from below by argon light, its twelve glass panels create a reflective installation of fractured space that exponentially extends the sequence of glass panels in a mirrored progression. This work explores the interplay of site, structure, light, and, in effect, immateriality, while also addressing the viewer. Originally conceived in 1969, the artist has subsequently installed distinct, unique versions of this work in a site-specific manner: always using local materials, Dill configures the panes of glass according to the space in which it is installed. 

The relationship between color and surface was a primary concern for many of the artists in this exhibition. Among them, Craig Kauffman and John McCracken utilize color as a physical presence or “material.” 

CRAIG KAUFFMAN implemented plastic as his primary medium, creating his best known work: a series of vacuum-formed, Plexiglas wall reliefs that investigate the material aspects of color. These glossy and symmetrical works utilized a vacuum-formed molding technique developed for commercial signage. His transparent, plastic “bubbles” were then painted from behind, achieving a luminous effect through the integration of color and ambient light, to create works which cannot be classified as either painting or sculpture.

The highly-saturated, monochromatic surfaces of JOHN McCRACKEN’s works are sanded and polished to produce such a high degree of reflectiveness that they simultaneously activate their surroundings and appear translucent. Thus, the objects gain a singular and almost otherworldly quality, appearing at once physical and immaterial through his application of color. His signature form, referred to as a “plank” (the exhibition includes Red Plank, 1967, and Think Pink, 1967), leans at an angle against the wall (the site of painting) while simultaneously entering into the three-dimensional realm and physical space of the viewer. McCracken’s work further challenged the notions of Minimalism through the artist’s interest in spiritual phenomena. 

Robert Irwin, James Turrell, and Doug Wheeler, all of whom began as abstract painters, developed practices which employ light and indeterminate space to extend and disorient the visual experience. These artists created environmental installations which explore the physical, sensory, and temporal aspects of the architectural space.

ROBERT IRWIN began his practice by dismantling the act of painting in order to expose the perceivable qualities of color and space. The “dot painting” Untitled, 1963-65 (on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), made up of small dots of color that interact with the viewer’s eyes, is an example of Irwin’s early interests in perception and its mechanisms. The exhibition will also include an example of Irwin’s free-standing, transparent acrylic columns (Untitled, 1970-71), in addition to an untitled work from 1969 (on loan from the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego) that is comprised of a white, convex disc mounted on the wall and lit from four points, casting numerous shadows to effectually dematerialize the object.

JAMES TURRELL’s work employs light as a medium. He creates what appear to be luminous three-dimensional forms which, upon closer inspection, resolve themselves into empty planes of light. Using colored light to cast geometric forms onto the corner of a room, these emanating projections explore the boundaries of the material and immaterial qualities of light to achieve perceivable visual forms that are distinct from the physical architectural space. The exhibition presents two such “corner projections” from the late 1960s.

DOUG WHEELER’s Untitled, 1969, belongs to a body of innovative light paintings known as his "Light Encasement" series (begun in 1965). These works consist of large squares of plastic, with neon lights embedded along their inside edges that blur the distinction between the work of art and its surrounding context. Generally hung on a wall in a pristine white room of precise proportions, these works create an immersive environment, absorbing the viewer in the subtle construction of pure space. Like Irwin and Turrell, Wheeler’s enveloping environments explore the materiality of light while also emphasizing the viewer's physical experience of space.

An illustrated catalogue with an essay by noted critic DAVE HICKEY will be published on the occasion of the exhibition in collaboration with Steidl, Germany. 

Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Laddie John Dill, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John McCracken, Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, De Wain Valentine, and Doug Wheeler