LE FIGAROPREMIUM, June 2nd, 2018 by Valerie Duponchelle. 

“This story of a personal odyssey opens the doors of his world and those of the inner realm called the imaginary” 

LE FIGARO PREMIUM, June 2nd, 2018 , by Valérie Duponchelle 

: “The Nantes Art Museum has had the good idea of making it easier for  visitor’s  every Thursday evening, every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, to discover this film in a loop. James Turrell explains his vision as an artist, what he seeks in the light of the world and what he recreates in his installations whose architecture disappears, to make them magical and supernatural. Around him, is the wild beauty of Arizona, the territory of the Hopi where only the eagle can find its real scale.” (…)

“In Passageways, the twenty-six-minute film dedicated to him in 1995,  by  the French Director Carine Asscher , is a man in the prime of life who looks at the camera without blinking. He quotes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the heavens evoked in Night Flight and the solitary planet of the Little Prince. He has the absolute clarity of the volunteer who imposes himself on all as master of dawn and twilight” (…)

• MEDIUM
• John HABERT “The Illusion of Minimalism”
  
   

James Turrell: “Passageways and my trip to New York  – 2017 Echo in the Film

“Highly recommended for those interested in late modern and contemporary art.

• LUNETTES ROUGES, Blog in Le MONDE, 2006

“At the exit, the beautiful video Passageways (extract visible on the site) where Turrell shows us Arizona, the country Hopi and his project Roden Crater, and tells us about his approach. I would go see on the spot.

•  BEAUX ARTS Magazine Special Issue on James TURRELL, 2000

“…” One of the finest moment in Carine Asscher’s film shows him on the cone of the extinct volcano with Gene Sekaquaptewa Chief of the Eagles Clan. The sound track makes intensive use of Hopi chants. Their rythm is spellbinding, more compelling than any vista. Lying side by side , Turrell and his Hopi friend  gaze up at the sky, using the rim of the crater as a frame. One wants this moment to last for ever as the two men juxtapose their memories and the camera joins them. The sky is framed by the volcano, but it is limitless and, above all, unstable slowly metamorphic. Mobile or immobile  the sequence shots capture shifting chromatic levels. Real time predominates over editing. We are in a continuous flux of colors. And the film points out that such works cannot be watched from a single vantage point. The viewer must move, be moved become nomad – that is to say, dismantle and reassemble his or her perceptions. “…”  by Piere Sterckx

REFERENCES

MASTER  THESIS ON JAMES TURRELL’S WORK – PARIS I, LA SORBONNE, PARIS

• “The Time and the wait in the aesthetic experience of James Turrell’s work Roden Crater. “Art and Art History. Andrea Amaya Porras , 2013.
  ” In the documentary Passageways directed by Carine ASSCHER, TURRELL connects light to perception:

I work on space and light. It is a way of honoring light through perception. Light is the material for “exercising” our perception. My work does not produce an object because the object of my work is perception. There is no image, because the representation does not interest me.  Extract from the Master THesis Page 18.

BOOKS

• “Art films, Films on Art“, The filmmaker point of view on an artist. Page 132, The Harmattan, Fanny ETIENNE, 2002.

“This film does not show the artist at work but offers an explanation of the complex artistic approach of James TURRELL, given by the artist himself, through an interview.This interview,  in and off  the image, takes the form of a quasi-continuous commentary upon which the whole film is based”.

• “Le Néon dans l’Art Contemporain” Obscure clarté. L’Harmatan, Anne BLAYO, 2006.
• “Rencontres 9” / James TURRELL / Almine RECH , Editions Images Modernes, 2005
• “Mehr Licht” Paul VIRILIO, Carine ASSCHER, Peter BEXTE, Wolfgang HAGEN, Francis PONGE, Henning LOHNER, 1999, Merve Verlag Berlin.