the beauty of working on a small team is having meaningful conversations before a meeting. the beauty of warpcast is that I get to journal these conversations for myself and others... 🧵

in this case, dan and I went into a rabbit hole of four installation artists: James Turrell, Sarah Oppenheimer, Robert Smithson, and Gordon Matta-Clark

Turrell- a spectacular artist that combines together liminal space, sound, and light to create an immersive experience for the subject. He is widely known for his work on Drake's Hotline Bling music video. Having had the pleasure to visit the exhibit at Mass Moca, it's as if you're walking around an isolation chamber, disorienting but tranquil. As I plan my trip to Ireland later this year I'm reminded there's an installation close to Cork called the Sky Garden, exhibiting more of Turrell's motifs of light and space.

While walking through the Mass Moca gallery, I was blown away by another architectural installation that allowed the viewer to also interact through time. Sarah Oppenheimer perfectly captures how both architecture and engineering play a role in how we perceive them in space.

With these two contemporary artists in mind, it's almost hard to not see to corollary work that came before, and even along side them. I can't help but to see a striking similarity in the works that James Turrell is producing and the work that Robert Smithson was producing. Both are evocative of art that changes through time, eventually degrading to stone and sand.

With Sarah, I'm reminded of Gordon Matta-Clark, reshaping and redefining what it means to have architectural installations through his work on Conical Intersect where he seems to be able to question the viewer on property and ownership through architecture and engineering.

Each of these American Artists have an important impact on our society and their messaging through art, light, time, and space.

Robert Smithson (1938 - 1973)
James Turrell (1943)
Gordon Matta-Clark (1943 - 1978)
Sarah Oppenheimer (1972)