American artist and pioneer of light art James Turrell’s latest work in the former Athene passageway spans 200 square meters and 12 meters in height. Moving through it from Kunsthalle Mannheim’s art nouveau building to the new building is an unforgettable experience of perception. After four years of development and preparation, the Mannheim art museum completes its new building with the site-specific permanent light installation Split Decision, thus adding a major work of modern art to its significant contemporary art collection. The Hector Stiftung II Kunst gGmbH initiated the project and provided the funding.

“My works aren’t about light – they are light,” says Turrell (b. 1943). Split Decision, an art work in light, is situated at the heart of Kunsthalle Mannheim. It transforms the two-story passageway into a unique light corridor. The space connects the new building designed by the architectural firm gmp – Architekten von Gerkan, Marg und Partner with Hermann Billing’s art nouveau structure. The new installation therefore both bridges the gap between the museum’s various programmatic types of architecture and transports its visitors from the early 21st century to the early 20th century via a kind of meditative time travel. Museum director Dr. Ulrike Lorenz is confident that it is “a real stroke of luck for Kunsthalle Mannheim’s collection as well as its architecture. Turrell manages to transform time and space in his art, as well as affecting the individual visitor perceiving his work. His light pieces transform and bewitch, leading us beyond the boundaries of our senses.”

Split Decision occupies a central place in the museum: the passageway between the new building and the art nouveau building. Two sources of light taking up the entire walls illuminate the atmospherically charged space with changing color spectra, similarly to Turrell’s Tall Glass series. The light sources consist of 80 colored images that complement each other in fixed combinations and slowly merge into sequences. After 154 minutes, the meditative cycle of colorful and complementary light play begins anew.

At Mannheim, the whole of the surrounding room is part of the installation, even more so than with the Tall Glass works. Turrell’s piece can be accessed from the first floor and also from Level 1 via bridge. The passage offers a view on Constantin Brancusi’s reflective Fish on the ground floor of the older building and Olafur Eliasson’s self-illuminating Starbrick under the cupola. In the opposite direction, the Athene passageway opens up via a tunnel into the light-flooded atrium of the Kunsthalle’s new building.

By tackling light, color and space in his own artistic fashion, Turrell carves out a prominent place for himself in the realm of modern art. The light artist, who comes from a family of Quakers, builds on the conceptual art of the 1960s and on abstract painting in his works, but gives greatest priority to what the given location has to offer him. He uses light to create immersive spaces with elaborate architectural and technical installations. His works physically immerse the viewer, allowing them to plunge into a seemingly endless space formed of light.

Turrell himself places his work within the category of perceptual art. “Light has an enormous power, and we are connected to it in an almost primordial way,” Turrell says. “I sculpt it as a material as far as possible. I want to make people be able to feel it, really experience the presence of light and the way that it fills up a room.”

From now on at Kunsthalle Mannheim, visitors can see for themselves how light manifests itself in the installation Split Decision.

Made possible by

Hector Stiftung II Kunst gGmbH