One of the most anticipated light installations of recent years has opened in Denmark. As Seen Below – The Dome, a monumental new Skyspace by James Turrell, is now open at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, marking a major milestone for both the artist and the museum.
Opening ahead of the summer solstice, the permanent installation is Turrell’s largest Skyspace ever created within a museum context and the 100th Skyspace realised during his career. Measuring 16 metres high and 40 metres in diameter, the vast domed structure has been compared in scale to Rome’s Pantheon and forms the centrepiece of a major expansion of ARoS.
Widely regarded as one of the most influential artists working with light and perception, Turrell has spent more than five decades creating environments that challenge how we experience space, colour and vision. His Skyspaces, found across the world, frame the sky through carefully designed architectural openings, transforming the act of looking into a contemplative and immersive experience.
Visitors enter As Seen Below through an underground passage before emerging into an immense circular chamber where Turrell’s signature lighting interacts with a large aperture open to the sky. The work creates an ever-changing encounter between architecture, light and atmosphere.
“As Seen Below offers a collective experience driven by light and the poetry of seasons to emphasise our relationship to nature, the sky, and our shared planet,”
said James Turrell.
The opening marks a transformative moment for ARoS, one of Scandinavia’s leading contemporary art museums.
Museum Director and CEO Rebecca Matthews said:
“This is a transformative moment for ARoS. With As Seen Below, we are not only presenting a landmark installation by one of the most important artists of our time, but also creating a place of wonder, reflection, and connection.”
She added:
“It is an extraordinary privilege to work alongside James Turrell and help realise his singular artistic vision – a vision that has inspired and challenged the way we experience light, space, and perception for more than five decades.”
The installation can be experienced in several modes. During Open Sky, visitors encounter the dome with its aperture exposed to the elements, turning the sky itself into a constantly changing artwork. In Colour Shift, the opening is sealed and the space is transformed through carefully calibrated colour sequences that dissolve architectural boundaries and make light itself appear tangible. Special sunrise and sunset Twilight Sessions combine both approaches, creating one of Turrell’s most celebrated perceptual experiences.
The opening also completes a major expansion of ARoS developed with architects Schmidt Hammer Lassen and Aarhus Municipality. The project includes The Salling Gallery, a new subterranean exhibition space dedicated to annual contemporary commissions, and ARoS Art Square, a new outdoor platform for public art.
Mayor of Aarhus Anders Winnerskjold described the project as strengthening the city’s position as an international cultural destination, while Karin Salling of the Salling Foundations called the work “a world-class work of art that both the people of Aarhus and visitors from around the world can look forward to experiencing.”
For Turrell, whose lifelong exploration of light began with his experiences as a pilot and member of the California Light and Space movement, As Seen Below joins a remarkable body of work that includes his ongoing magnum opus, Roden Crater in Arizona.
With its monumental scale, immersive architecture and ever-changing relationship to the sky above, As Seen Below further cements Turrell’s status as one of contemporary art’s most visionary creators of experiential environments.
About the Artist
James Turrell was born in Los Angeles in 1943, and his fascination with light began early, partly inspired by his upbringing in a Quaker family where silence and contemplation played a central role.
As a young man, Turrell became a licensed pilot and spent significant time in the air, captivated by light, the colours of the sky, and the nature of perception. He has described flying as a meditative experience – being absorbed by the sky and its vastness – and observing how light and colour change with altitude, time of day, and weather conditions.
Turrell is trained in art and the psychology of perception, and in the 1960s he became part of the Light and Space movement, where he found his calling in creating experiences that reshape the way we see and feel light.
While the Skyspaces are his best-known works, Roden Crater, an unprecedented large-scale artwork created within a volcanic cinder cone located in the Painted Desert region of Northern Arizona, is Turrell’s magnum opus, and his life-long project. A gateway to the contemplation of light, time and landscape nearly five decades in the making, development on Roden Crater is ongoing. Once completed, the project is intended to last for centuries to come.
About
ARoS is an international art museum located in Aarhus, Denmark. With six galleries and an entire floor dedicated to transformative installations, ARoS offers an important space for recalibrating the past, negotiating the present, and imagining the future through art.
ARoS’ collection contains more than 8,300 works, including masterpieces by Danish and international artists. The collection features iconic installations such as Olafur Eliasson’s Your rainbow panorama (2011) and Ron Mueck’s oversized sculpture Boy (1999). From today, visitors can also experience the installation As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace by James Turrell; the artist’s most ambitious Skyspace to date. The groundbreaking installation reinforces ARoS’ position as one of the world’s leading museums for installation.
Each year, ARoS hosts six to eight major exhibitions alongside a rich public engagement programme. Its bold, inclusive, and international outlook has led to groundbreaking exhibitions featuring artists like J.M.W. Turner, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Franciska Clausen, Salvador Dalì, Asger Jorn, Per Kirkeby, Barbara Kruger, Isaac Julien, Jenny Holzer, Bill Viola, Isaac Julien, Cindy Sherman, Mariko Mori, Sarah Sze and many more. More than 650,000 visitors come to ARoS annually. @arosartmuseum
