James Turrell's As Seen Below Opens at ARoS After a Decade

After ten years of development and fundraising totaling a quarter billion Danish kroner, James Turrell's monumental underground installation As Seen Below has opened at the ARoS Museum in Aarhus. The work, a 40-meter-wide and 16-meter-high concrete dome with a 6-meter oculus open to the sky, was unveiled at a twilight press session attended by around 40 journalists. Mayor Anders Winnerskjold and ARoS director Rebecca Matthews welcomed attendees, with architect Morten Schmidt noting the museum's design is based on Dante's nine circles of Hell. The installation includes a new Salling Galleri adding 1,000 square meters. The experience is dominated by intense cyan light and a powerful reverberation that the critic found distracting from contemplation. The color of the dome shifts through orange, pink, purple, and green, while the sky seen through the oculus appears hyper-saturated. The critic compares the effect to the 'overview effect' from the Apollo Blue Marble photo, but notes the work feels programmatic and instrumentalizing, prioritizing sensory impact over personal spiritual connection. Turrell, raised as a Quaker, aims to create spaces for inner light-seeking. His Skyspace installations number over 100 worldwide, and he has become a pop-cultural figure, admired by Kanye West who filmed a gospel film at Turrell's Rodent Crater in Arizona. The critic concludes the work is both timeless and vulgar, a 'sensory machine monster' driven by hype and image circulation.