What are the exact dimensions of your life? Where does it end and where does the world begin? James Turrell is a genre-breaking artist whose greatest skill is to make you aware of your self and your body and how we glide through this existence. I was first introduced to him at PS 1 in Queens with a site-specific piece he had created by carving out a piece of the ceiling to expose the sky. You could lie on your back and see the clouds in a way you never had before with a specific frame of contemplation around it. The work guided me to a new place. Much of his work does that with varying degrees of revelation depending on the work and you and where you meet. Some are dazzling visual illusions like the one above. Sleights of hand and eye. The work that had a profound effect on me, I can't show. It was a 10-15 minute "performance" that involved groping your way in complete darkness along a wall holding onto a metal rail that led to a theatre seat. For me the complete darkness inspired a silent panic and brought up recurring memories of my vision failing me as I endured visual field migraines as a kid. Once I surmounted that fear, I sat down, my wife a few feet away but in another dimension. Then we sat and waited. The overwhelming darkness was a kind of death. I moved my head from side to side, my unseen pupils dilating to their full size, hungry for visual stimulation. Then, like being present at the creation, a pinprick of light appeared (one that was there all along of course, it was just that now my eyes could see it). And glacially, almost imperceptibly, the window into the void grew ever so slightly. But never too dramatically. It was as if we were witnessing the birth of a distant star. Then it was time to go. Gradually the world came back into focus but unmistakably altered.

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