For his exhibition at the Guggenheim, Turrell has created a major new installation entitled Aten Reign (2013), radically transforming the museum in the tradition of his most sweeping, large-scale projects.
In Aten Reign, daylight from the museum's oculus streams down to light the deepest layer of a massive assembly suspended from the ceiling. Using a series of interlocking cones lined with LED fixtures, the installation surrounds this core of daylight with five elliptical rings of shifting, colored light that echo the banded pattern of the museum's ramps. As is typical of Turrell's work, the apparatus that creates the effect is mostly hidden from view, encouraging viewers to interpret what they see by means of their own perception.
The work promotes a state of meditative contemplation in a communal viewing space, rekindling the museum's founding identity as a “temple of spirit,” as articulated by Hilla Rebay, the Guggenheim's first director and a pioneer in the promotion of nonobjective art.
