A volcanic creation erupting with light

The Shanghai show James Turrell: Immersive Light includes installations that convey the magic of light and shadow.[Photo provided to China Daily]

It started when US light-and-space artist James Turrell bought a volcanic cinder cone in Arizona in 1977.

The 74-year-old has since been sculpting the peak into a large-scale work called Roden Crater by chiseling open-sky tunnels and closed chambers to capture light in both day and night.

He remains fully committed to the ongoing project.

That's despite an injury earlier this year that kept him from attending the ongoing exhibition, James Turrell: Immersive Light, at Shanghai's Long Museum.

The show features photos and documents introducing the project's past, present and future. It includes 13 installations that convey the magic and mysterious qualities of light and shadow.

The Los Angeles native is internationally acclaimed for works that play with illumination.

He uses light and space, rather than specific objects and shapes, to create works that challenge and enrich viewers' perceptions of what they see.

Turrell is also a pilot who has flown for more than 12,000 hours. He works to portray the sky's rich color spectrum. He views the firmament as his "studio, material and canvas".

Many people say Turrell's works make them feel as if they're viewing a sunset.

On his personal website, the artist says: "My work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing. I'm also interested in the sense of presence of space; that is space where you feel a presence, almost an entity - that physical feeling and power that space can give."

Marc Glimcher, president of the American Pace Gallery that represents Turrell, says every work at the Shanghai exhibition represents a different experience. All together, they guide the audience to follow Turrell's investigations of light step by step, and understand how he has learned to shape light into a subject of art over half a century.

On show are works from 1966 and 1967 that were created as a result of Turrell's first efforts to discover how to make light a substance of form. There is also his 1994 work Key Lime, in which viewers walk through a pitch black channel that they navigate by feeling a wall.