Lachlan Turczan
For over a decade, artist Lachlan Turczan has investigated natural phenomena—primarily the interplay of water, light, and sound—resulting in installations that engage audience perception through direct experience.
Turczan’s use of water as a lens expands the artistic tradition of the California Light and Space movement. Beginning in the 1960s, pioneering artists like James Turrell, Robert Irwin, and Helen Pashgian explored perception by creating situations that prompt audiences to examine their own looking. Turczan generates similar frameworks for vision, enfolding sound and light into synesthetic experiences through the physical translation of the senses. Wavespace is the confluence of optics, acoustics, and hydrodynamics— Turczan’s keystone artwork that invites visitors to experience new perceptual rhythms through choreographed liquid light phenomena.
The ensuing light artwork is fractal in nature, reminiscent of self-similar patterns found at every scale of the natural world. Each person reports seeing something different in the play of light, ranging from solar flares to microscopic amoebas. Wavespace makes audiences acutely aware of their own perceptions, providing an opportunity to engage with their imaginations in an embodied experience similar to cloud-gazing, set in a communal gathering more akin to sitting around a campfire than to cinema.
Wavespace is open for ticketed 1 hour reservations.
Wednesday—Sundays, starting at 7pm and 8pm.
About the artist
Lachlan Turczan was born in Pasadena, California, in 1993.
Turczan graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2015 with a degree in Media Studies. During his time at RISD, he took courses in glass, neuroscience, and computer animation to inform his interests in optics, perception, and movement. Wavespace is the latest development of Turczan’s thesis project centered around the use of water and light as artistic mediums.
From 2015 to 2022, Turczan worked as a water choreographer for WET Design. During those seven years, he choreographed some of the world’s largest fountains, including the Dubai Expo Fountain (2020), Singapore Airport Fountain (2019), Bellagio Fountain (2018), Burj Khalifa Fountain (2017), and the Wynn Palace Fountain (2016).
In 2022, Turczan received funding from Google to develop several water and light artworks. He spent two years developing Wavespace and Sympathetic Resonance, which were publicly unveiled at Milan Design Week (2023). Since then, Turczan has exhibited Wavespace at the Noor Riyadh Light Art Festival (2023). Each presentation has undergone changes in choreography as the engineered components of the artwork are in constant development.
Turczan works in Los Angeles’ Arts District, where he creates perceptual artworks with water, light, and sound. Additional works by the artist can be seen at his studio by private appointment.
For inquiries, please contact: info@lachlanturczan.com