Titled Spectrum 14, the new work will be on view from September 10, 2024, through Summer 2026.
Ross’s Solar Spectrum installations are a series of site-specific works that are highly attuned to their geographic location. The works consist of a mounted array of large acrylic prisms that cast continually changing patterns of spectral sunlight across the spaces in which they are located. Each prism is precisely positioned and angled to capture sunlight at a particular time of day or time of year. To calculate these positions, Ross works with an architectural scale model of the space, positioned on a “sun angle machine” he invented, and later discovered was akin to a machine used by Renaissance architects to study the movement of shadows across their facades.
Over the course of each day the spectral bands will move throughout the space in relation to the sun, taking a slightly different path on each successive day. As seasons change, some prisms in the array will fall outside the sun’s path, while new ones begin to take center stage. Over the course of the year, Ross’s work changes in response to the Earth’s rotational orbit.
"I thought the Getty Rotunda space would be an excellent space for a Solar Spectrum artwork where shafts of solar spectrum color would be projected into the space below and could be walked through as people moved about, giving them an intimate interaction with the colors of the sun,” says Ross. “The Solar Spectrum is always moving and changing. You may not always be able to see it move, but when you turn around it will be in a different place. Standing in the large spectrum you can feel different sensations from the light of the different solar colors.”
Spectrum 14 will serve as an introductory experience for the exhibition Lumen: The Art and Science of Light, on view September 10 through December 8, 2024. The exhibition examines scientific understandings of light during the “Long Middle Ages” (800–1600). A selection of contemporary artworks intersect with the exhibition’s themes (such as “the science of the rainbow”) and show how artists continue to engage with light today. In premodern societies, careful observation of the heavens was foundational in establishing timekeeping, calendars, agricultural cycles, and navigation. Spectrum 14 helps us visualize the earth’s cyclical rotation and perhaps feel more connected to the ancient and ongoing experience of closely watching the movement of light—and making the necessary calculations—to mark the days, months, and seasons.
Lumen: The Art and Science of Light is curated by Kristen Collins, curator of manuscripts at the Getty Museum, and Nancy Turner, conservator of manuscripts at the Getty Museum. The contemporary works were curated by Glenn Phillips, senior curator, head of exhibitions, and head of modern & contemporary collections at the Getty Research Institute
This project was commissioned for PST ART as part of the exhibition Lumen: The Art & Science of Light. This is the second “Rotunda Commission,” a series of art installations inspired by the Getty Museum’s collection, architecture, and site.
This installation is part of PST ART, a Getty initiative presenting over 70 exhibitions at institutions across Southern California tied to the theme Art & Science Collide. PST ART is presented by Getty. Lead partners are Bank of America, Alicia Miñana & Rob Lovelace, Getty Patron Program. The principal partner is Simons Foundation. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit: pst.art
About Charles Ross
Charles Ross creates large-scale prisms to project solar spectra into architectural spaces; focuses sunlight into powerful beams to create solar burn works; draws the quantum behavior of light with dynamite; and his Star Map Paintings, exhibited in the exhibition LoSpazio, at the 1986 Venice Biennale; and works with a variety of other media including photography and film. In 1971 he conceived of Star Axis, an architectonic earthwork and naked eye observatory that he has been building in New Mexico since 1976.
Ross discovered his passion for making art while studying mathematics at UC Berkeley. There he received his BA in Mathematics (1960) and an MA in Art in 1962. In 1961 his first solo sculpture exhibit was at Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco. In the 1960s he taught sculpture at UC Berkeley, Cornell University, School of Visual Arts, and Lehman College, New York. In 1963 he received a year-long fellowship to make art in New York. While there he made welded steel sculptures, and also worked with the Judson Dancers, including Yvonne Rainer and Deborah Hay, to create A Collective Event, performed at Judson Church, November 19 and 20th, 1963.
Ross’s 28 permanent solar spectrum installations created over the past 48 years include: The National Museum of the American Indian, for which he was awarded the Washington Building Congress Award in 2005; Conversations with the Sun (2004), Meiji University, Tokyo; Spectrum 12 (1999), Saitama University, Japan, created in collaboration with architect Riken Yamamoto.