“PLEASE do not use a camera flash or a torch light here.” The sign for visitors at the entrance of the James Turrell retrospective exhibition in the Long Museum says something about the installation artwork inside.

The narrow corridor that leads to the exhibit is so dark that visitors might be forgiven for instinctively reaching for some portable light source.

But light is ahead in a world that is pure Turrell, who is renowned for using light and space to explore the visual and psychological reflections of perception, sensational stimulation and spatial transformation. The exhibition is entitled “Immersive Light.”

Born in 1943 in Los Angeles, Turrell has been a leading figure in the Southern California Light and Space Movement since the 1960s, celebrating the pleasure of the senses and extending the limits of human perception.

His works have been the focus of more than 60 solo exhibitions since 1969 in museums around the world, including the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.

Even before the Long Museum exhibition opened, it was creating ripples of enthusiasm among Shanghai art lovers.

“I have always been so fascinated by him and his light installations,” said Cathy Wang, a 20-something white-collar worker, “I remember I first read about him and his art in a local magazine. At that time, I just prayed that he could come to China some day.”

That day has arrived in an exhibition on display through May 21.

Unfortunately for those hoping to meet the artist, Turrell won’t be at the opening because of an injury sustained at home.

The exhibit brings together the oeuvres of Turrell’s five-decade artistic career, including his iconic light projections and space installations, and a selection of photography and prints.

Art lovers have been queuing up at the Long Museum to view the exhibition, waiting for up to an hour and happily paying the 200-yuan (US$29.2) entry free.

“Ganzfield” on the first floor is perhaps the most talked-about piece in the exhibition, with queues there, too, even on weekdays.

First created in 1976, the work is based on sensory-deprivation experiments that Turrell, Robert Irwin, and Ed Wortx conducted in 1969 for the Art and Technology program at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

With carefully designed space and light, this piece creates the illusion of seemingly indeterminate and indefinite space filled with a tangible light substance. Visitors cannot discern any horizon or dimensions. It evokes the experience of flying disorientated through cloud and fog, or enduring whiteout conditions during a blizzard.

“I want to address the light we see in dreams and the spaces that seem to come from those dreams,” he once said.

Indeed, Turrell knows something about flying. He obtained his pilot’s license at the age of 16.

As a Quaker, he registered as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, and ended up flying Buddhist monks out of Tibet. Turrell called it “a humanitarian mission” with “beautiful places to fly.”

His airborne experiences may have inspired his series of “skyspaces.”

He began the series of enclosed spaces open to the sky through an aperture in a roof in the 1970s.

Although the Shanghai exhibition doesn’t include any of those works, they are included in a film introduction of Turrell’s works at the museum. In the film, Turrell said that he wanted to render the experience of “letting go when visitors are gazing at the ‘sky’.”

He is a master in evoking the subtlety of emptiness.

In 1965, he received a bachelor of arts degree from Pomona College in California, majoring in perceptual psychology. He also studied mathematics, geology and astronomy.

In 1966, he enrolled in the graduate Studio Art program at the University of California’s Irvine campus, where he began creating works using light projections.

Unhappily for Shanghai art lovers, Turrell’s most iconic and monumental artwork, entitled “Roden Crater,” isn’t part of the current exhibition. It is considered the ultimate accumulation of all aspects of his thinking about light, space and perception.

Early in the 1970s, when Turrell began to consider how to take his work out into the landscape, he discovered the Roden Crater, an extinct volcano near the Painted Desert of Arizona and purchased it. During the next four decades, he designed and constructed a complex of chambers and tunnels there, transforming the extinct volcano into a multi-chambered, naked eye observatory.

Photos on the second floor of the exhibition give visitors a glimpse of the magic of light and space in “Roden Crater.”

One highlight of the current exhibition is “Wedgework,” comprised of walls angled into a discrete space so that fluorescent light sources hidden behind the partition walls slice across the room. It creates the appearance of transparent light screens.

After viewing the exhibition, visitors might begin to comprehend Turrell’s words: “I apprehend light ­­­­— I make events that shape or contain light.”

Meet the curator

Wang Wei, the director at Long Museum and woman responsible for mounting Turrell’s first China retrospective, answered questions from Shanghai Daily.

Q: What prompted you to bring Turrell to Shanghai?

A: First, because of his worldwide fame and popularity. Secondly, he is now in his 70s, which is a ripe age for a retrospective exhibition. And lastly, it is the museum’s goal to bring world masters to Shanghai.

Q: When was this project initiated?

A: At the beginning of last year.

Q: It’s said that the Long Museum broke a record in mounting this exhibition in only three months instead of the usual six. Is that true?

A: Yes, we squeezed it into three months. You know, the time difference and communications are always two big problems. The translation work and construction of the space all take time. Many of our museum staff worked from eight in the morning until 1am the next day. Without their efforts, this exhibition would have been impossible.

Q: How many of Turrell’s works did the Long collect?

A: Only one. “Ganzfield” on the first floor.

Q: What other major exhibitions are on the museum’s calendar?

A: This is the year of sculpture at the museum, so we have Zhan Wang and Xiang Jing on the list. In 2018, we will have a retrospective exhibition for Gerhard Richter. We are also considering an exhibition of Anthony Gomley in the future. In the realm of traditional art, we also will have Buddhist statues and Thangka exhibitions.