the Grey Planet
A 7 year old boy lies awake in bed. Starlight washes over his hair and face. His eyes respond with a shimmer of their own. "When I grow up," he whispers, "I want to be a space explorer. No one really knows what is way out there in the darkness. We only know what we can see with our telescopes and our satellites. Well I want to take the place of a satellite..." His final transmission to the stars sent, he falls asleep.
The eight paintings on the first person subjective side of the gallery show the reflections of stars through the eye of a stargazer. The black of space speckled with the white of stars gradually becomes overwhelmed with points of white on white culminating in a starstruck ending.
The ten works displayed on the opposite walls are attempts at telling this stargazer's story from an objective vantage point. The first appears to be our subject matter, the second a blueprint of the first, the third graphically marks out a temperature reading, and so on. To objectify meaning from objects ends in a final cold and disorienting look at space by the 10'th attempt. If true understanding of meaning is achieved by painting number 10, it is only the kind that leaves one feeling cold and void of any passion. The alchemist has boiled the content of his caldron down to its primordial substance, but the content without form leaves only the sizzling sound of something burning itself out. Is this really the highest and truest jumping off place for an artist or scientist to make a beginning?
But one final piece is viewed alone, tiny and rectangle from the rest of the squared imagery. It is somewhat sentimentally painted and deliberately unfinished. Alizarin crimson has been stained on the door posts and frame above the work so as to cloak its scent from the Angel seeking its destruction. What is this new visitor, or is it ancient, close by, and yet unnoticed by our star-cluttered eyes? The grey planet offers gravity to an otherwise aimless exploration through space.