James Turrell exhibition in Hong Kong brings Roden Crater models and Skyspaces to Gagosian, offering visitors a rare chance to experience the artist’s work up close.
A widely circulated photograph on social media last year showed Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves and artist Alexandra Grant sharing an intimate kiss inside a light-filled architectural setting, prompting speculation that the image was AI generated; the scene, however, was real and set inside the work by James Turrell known as Roden Crater.
In an era driven by screens and algorithms, Turrell’s work asks viewers to slow down and notice how natural light, framed by precise architecture, can alter perception. The current exhibition in Hong Kong brings three of Turrell’s major projects into tangible view, including models, drawings and new LED-controlled installations that make the mechanics of light legible.
About the James Turrell exhibition
The Gagosian gallery in Hong Kong is presenting a rare retrospective titled “Lifting the Veil,” featuring Turrell’s large-scale projects and recent LED works. The show runs May 28 to Aug. 1, 2026, Gagosian said in a statement.
Turrell has spent more than five decades treating light as the primary medium of his art. He has worked on Roden Crater since 1977, transforming a volcanic cinder cone in the Painted Desert of northern Arizona into a system of tunnels, chambers and viewing apertures that frame the sky.
Roden Crater: a sky observatory in Arizona
Roden Crater is Turrell’s most ambitious land-art project, begun after he purchased the extinct volcano in 1977. The work repurposes the crater’s interior into a naked-eye observatory where architecture becomes a tool to study celestial movement and shifting light.
As a visitor walks through the long passages toward the crater’s core, the rim frames a slice of sky that changes with time and weather, making the heavens feel unusually near and intensely colored. Project documentation, models and drawings in the Hong Kong show reveal the precision behind that framing.
Roden Crater has been described by critics as one of the most ambitious earthworks of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. News reports have noted that the site attracted high-profile attention, including a reported donation from rapper Kanye West and the use of the site for the “Jesus Is King” music video.
Skyspaces: everyday rooms for the sky
For audiences who cannot travel to Arizona, Turrell’s Skyspaces offer a nearer way to experience the artist’s work. Skyspaces are discrete rooms with an opening in the ceiling that frames the sky, while interior lighting is adjusted to alter the way the aperture and sky are perceived.
Turrell mixes natural light with computer-controlled LED lighting to create perceptual illusions. At dawn and dusk, as interior LEDs shift color, the framed patch of sky can appear to change hue and depth, sometimes seeming to become velvety blue, deep green, or intense orange.
Turrell has said, “Light is normally used to display objects; I use light as the object of display.” That proposition is literal in a Skyspace: there are no sculptures or paintings, only a changing sky that functions as a moving canvass.
As Seen Below, the ARoS commission
ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Denmark will unveil Turrell’s new permanent installation, “As Seen Below,” on June 19, 2026, the museum said. The work is the largest Skyspace in a museum setting to date.
ARoS said the work measures more than 130 feet in diameter and exceeds 50 feet in height, creating a vast domed interior that captures Nordic summer light. At that scale, the museum added, visitors experience a pronounced sense of enclosure and slow, breathing shifts in the quality of light.
Turrell has described the work as among his most ambitious. The installation sits below the museum and draws the long, clear daylight of northern Europe into a resonant interior space that the artist and curators say blurs architecture and sensory experience.
What to see at Gagosian in Hong Kong
Gagosian’s “Lifting the Veil” brings physical models, site plans and photographic documentation of Roden Crater to the gallery, alongside three new pieces from Turrell’s LED Glass series, titled “Fortitude,” “Patmos,” and “Communion,” the gallery said.
Inside the gallery, Turrell constructed dedicated rooms where color slowly shifts through geometric apertures, allowing visitors to feel how the space’s texture and tone change with light. The effect, curators say, is intimate and quietly transformative.
In a city pulsed by neon and information overload, the exhibition offers a place without narrative or spectacle, a space to sit under a framed sky and notice how light changes perception. Visit the models and new LED works and reserve an afternoon to sit quietly and observe.
James Turrell exhibition “Lifting the Veil”
Dates: May 28 to Aug. 1, 2026
Location: Gagosian, 7th Floor, Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong
* Photography is not permitted inside the installation, the gallery said.
