"Protosystems" installed at Transformer. |
At the time I was invited to create work for the gallery's storefront window space, I was reading about asteroids and the variety of efforts, scientific and commercial, to capture an asteroid and bring it closer to Earth. It occurred to me to imagine the possibility of an asteroid being captured for artistic purposes. I wondered, "What if Transformer acquired an asteroid?" That thought led me to imagine a visual narrative, inspired by science-fiction films, that I could then take apart and reconstruct.
In reading about asteroids, I noticed how we can talk about them as if they are "objects" to be acquired and as if they are "worlds" to be explored. They are just the right size to straddle the concepts of "object" and "world"; it is as if a person could simultaneously stand outside and inside of an asteroid. I tried to present this ambiguous scale relationship by including a large-ish asteroid in the piece (it is roughly 2 cubic feet). Seen inside Transformer's storefront, it is presented as though the gallery acquired the object from outer space and brought it down to Earth for passersby to see. I also made a small, scale model of the gallery (about an inch tall) and placed it on the sculpted asteroid with one of the piece's cameras pointed at it. It can be seen on the third television monitor from the left, sitting under a transparent dome as if it were the first art gallery in outer space. ART. IN. SPAAAAACE! (Sorry, that had to be done.)
Work in progress documentation of the Transformer model. |