The sky appears near
The rim frames the void and the brain invents a ceiling, unable to hold infinity.
Sandra Fauconnier — CC BY 4.0 · Smiley.toerist — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Nanda Sluijsmans from Den Haag, Nederland — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Nanda Sluijsmans from Den Haag, Nederland — CC BY-SA 2.0
An outdoor work by the American artist James Turrell, completed in 1996 in the dunes near Kijkduin, whose only material is the sky. The work is an oval crater cut into a dune, ringed by an earth rampart, with a long stone bench at its floor. You lie on the bench and look up, the rim of the crater frames the sky, and something unexpected happens: the sky appears domed, like a near ceiling, rather than an open and limitless void. That is Turrell's whole subject. He has worked all his life on perception rather than objects — on how the brain constructs what we think we are seeing. When a rim encloses the sky and there is no horizon and no reference for distance, the brain invents a near surface, because it cannot hold an edgeless void. The experience takes time and patience: at least ten minutes lying down before the effect settles, and it is strongest at dawn or dusk when the sky's colour changes slowly. Practical points: free and always open, with no facilities. Access is on foot across the dunes from the Kijkduin car park. The site is entirely exposed to wind and rain.
The rim frames the void and the brain invents a ceiling, unable to hold infinity.
Nothing is displayed — the work is what your perception does with it.
The effect is strongest when the sky's colour changes slowly.
Kijkduin, in the dunes south-west of The Hague
Walk to the floor of the crater, lie on your back on the stone bench, and look up without lifting your head. Do not look around and do not talk. After about five to ten minutes the effect begins: the sky loses its apparent depth and becomes a domed surface directly above you. Hurrying misses the work entirely — many people arrive, photograph it and leave without seeing anything.
He has another in the Netherlands, Inside Out at the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Hoge Veluwe park, a sky room with a square opening in the ceiling — the same principle in enclosed form. His best known work is the Roden Crater in Arizona, a volcano he has been converting since the 1970s and which has still not opened.
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