Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Ganzfeld
Stopped off at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park yesterday on my marathon snowy drive back to London. They currently have three pieces by James Turrell installed in their new building. His work is preoccupied with light and optical perception – so much so that my digital camera couldn’t even register the two other more subtle pieces. In Ganzfeld the rear of the room is literally a wall of light that can be approached across a sloping floor. The ceiling slopes down and the side walls widen towards the light, distorting perception of distance in the space.
Ganzfeld provides an useful counterpoint to Chris Ofili’s The Upper Room in Tate Britain (with architect David Adjaye) that we’ve been thinking about recently. Both pieces could be said to have ‘spiritual’ content in one way or another: Ganzfeld works in a very direct, phenomenal way using light and its poetic associations whilst The Upper Room relies far more on symbolism and iconography. Both clevery employ layout and bodily experience; Ganzfeld to induce a slightly unreal sense and The Upper Room in terms of ritual and approach.
Of the two pieces Ganzfeld seems the most successful to me, largely due to its directness. This may also be because it is so polyvalent - I guess I'm just ascribing something of the Christian significance of light to the work whilst others might bring different values to it? The Upper Room is far more pointed in his references.
