Copenhagen Contemporary

Aftershock is a total installation created specifically for CC by the American light artist James Turrell. By exposing human eyes to an intense flow of colour, the brain will start to hallucinate whilst attempting to create meaning in a boundless space of colour. This is a major work in Turrell’s oeuvre and the only one using stroboscopic light.

In Aftershock, we experience a disorientating effect, where space boundaries are blurred, and we begin to wonder whether our eyes are open or closed. In Turrell’s own words, “My works are not about light, they are light..”

Turrell describes his works as containers for light where light and colour are experienced as physical materials. In a broader sense, his practice is about light as both a physical and metaphorical presence determining human perception and therefore also how we experience the world.

About James Turrell
James Turrell (b.1943) is a giant of international contemporary art and one of the most acclaimed contemporary artists alive. He is part of art history and has been a powerful source of inspiration for later generations, including Olafur Eliasson. Since the 1960s, his ground-breaking artistic experiments have taken the world by storm. Light, space and human perception are key themes in his practice. With a Quaker background – a pacifist and Christian community who believes in the ’inner light’ – Turrell began experimenting with light as an art medium in the mid-1960s. Through his studies of perceptual psychology, Turrell became interested in the theory of perception, exploring how space, light, and colour affect humans.