James Turrell

The Return

Upcoming
Jun 14 – Sep 27, 2025
Seoul

Pace is pleased to present 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, opening June 14 and running through September 27, will also feature 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, 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.” Turrell’s 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. With his monumental, ongoing Roden Crater project near Flagstaff, Arizona, 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 Turrell some 60 years ago, and the gallery has represented him since 2002. The artist’s upcoming 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 Glimcher and Pace. The Return will include 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 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.

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 will show 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 will 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.

About the Artist

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.