James Turrell: Aftershock

Aftershock is an immersive installation created specifically for CC by the American artist James Turrell. The experience of Aftershock begins outside the work, where you are asked to wait before ascending the temple-like steps and entering the so-called sensory space to witness a cycle of coloured light. Enveloping you in light and colour, the installation induces an experience of spatial boundaries failing away and loss of orientation. Aftershock is one in a line of so called “Ganzfelds” installations, that have become iconic for Turrell’s work with light, space and colour. Ganzfeld is a psychological term coined in the 1930s by the German psychologist Wolfgang Metzger, who was studying the effects of sensory overload. Exposed to an intense torrent of colour, the brain starts hallucinating as it struggles to create meaning in an endless colour field. In 2024, Aftershock became the first acquisition of a permanent work at CC, thanks to a donation from Augustinus Fonden.