An introspective James Turrell invites you to surrender under the immateriality of light with “Gathered Sky,” a spellbinding permanent installation in Beijing’s Temple Hotel. Three decades after turning the Roden Crater, an extinct volcano in Arizona, into a celestial work of art that was recently exhibited at the Guggenheim and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the American artist walks through the making of his first-ever commission in China. 

“Light is intangible, so I thought it was the perfect theme for a former Buddhist temple,” says Belgian entrepreneur Juan van Wassenhove, who founded the hotel with film producers-turned-hoteliers Li Chow and Lin Fan. “I have seen it touch people's emotions in a profound way.” Rejecting art’s obsession with the object or the image, Turrell’s work brings the sky to human reach, while the interplay of artificial light acts as an optical hallucinogenic. 

An avid collector of contemporary art, Van Wassenhove hopes for the 600-year-old space to become “a living museum,” with “Gathered Sky” currently joined by an exhibition of work by Nanjing-based artist Tang Guo, a reflection on finding inner peace in a world wrecked by destructive force. As for what he’d like one of the artist’s few works open to the public to evoke in visitors? “Calm, tranquility, a slower pace of life and extraordinary beauty.”