Markus Raetz

Markus Raetz, born in 1941, is one of Bern‘s most famous contemporary artists and a key figure in the generation of “researchers of artistic perception”. His multi-faceted work playfully revolves around the processual nature of our experience of reality and makes us aware that, by using a great diversity of media and techniques, reality changes in relation to our standpoint.

Since the 1960s, Raetz has created numerous works, including more than 30,000 drawings. His work focused on drawings and paintings in the 1960s and 1970s, and continued with sculptures in the 1980s and 1990s, beginning with the sculpture Der Kopf in the Merian Park in Basel (1984). The principal topic of his work is the nature of perception. His works do not focus on what they portray, but on how they are perceived. They often require interaction by the viewer, and can be understood only when viewed in motion or from different angles.

Raetz is equally adept at producing print and three-dimensional artworks. The line as an element of design is not only manifest on paper but likewise in space. Thus lines form words, for example, which change their meanings relative to where the beholder stands, sometimes even into the opposite. This exhibition of prints and three-dimensional artworks thereby unfolds semantic fields and sensitizes our perception into finding new options for interpretation.

Billy Collins, who is presently poet laureate of the United States, has said that “a poem is like a ride,” and the poet who wrote it is “the first one to take that ride.” Raetz’s ride is a quiet one, but it makes the shifting sand we stand on pleasurable. We are moving. There are many points of view. But we hold our binoculars and gaze at whatever is out there.

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TL;DR
Raetz’s work evokes minimalism in the simplicity of the forms he creates. The perceptual shifts that one experiences when viewing his work is gradual and determined solely by the position the viewer chooses to take at the instance of viewing. Something to consider when producing my final artwork: Should the perception change introduced be one that is gradual, or one that shocks and provokes.

James Turrell

“I make spaces that apprehend light for our perception, and in some ways gather it, or seem to hold it… my work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing.”

James Turrell (born May 6, 1943) is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. His work, described as “not about light, or a record of light; but rather light itself – the physical presence of light made manifest in sensory form,” engages viewers with the limits and wonder of human perception.

Informed by his training in perceptual psychology and a childhood fascination with light, Turrell began experimenting with light as a medium in southern California in the mid-1960’s. The Pasadena Art Museum mounted a one-man show of his Projection Pieces, created with high-intensity projectors and precisely modified spaces, in 1967. Mendota Stoppages, a series of light works created and exhibited in his Santa Monica studio, paired Projection Pieces with structural cuts in the building, creating apertures open to the light outside. These investigations aligning and mixing interior and exterior, formed the groundwork for the open sky spaces found in his later Skyspace, Tunnel and Crater artworks.

Turrell often cites the Parable of Plato’s Cave to introduce the notion that we are living in a reality of our own creation, subject to our human sensory limitations as well as contextual and cultural norms. This is evident in Turrell’s over eighty Skyspaces, chambers with an aperture in the ceiling open to the sky. The simple act of witnessing the sky from within a Turrell Skyspace, notably at dawn and dusk, reveals how we internally create the colors we see and thus, our perceived reality.

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TL;DR
I actually did research on James Turrell back in year 3 for my VC3 project, but ended up not working on him as it proved too much of a challenge then, to fully grasp his work. Glad to be able to revisit his work and I’m really excited at the possibility of applying some of his ideas.