This set of paintings originated from a collection of images cut and saved from various printed sources over a period of 25 years. They are part of an ongoing series of works that explore the connections between the specificity of human experience and the cosmic conditions of passing time. By marking the struggles that change society against the changing configurations of the stars, an understanding of any unique event is presented as affected by the assumption invested in the unchanging form of the night sky. Each media reproduction is from a particular date and digitally reprinted from its original source. The specific arrangement of the stars that would have been visible precisely on that date, are painted in oil below.
Over time, the stars are always shifting: first by visibly moving around the North star, and then in their mutual drift closer and farther away from each other over long, imperceptible periods time. Historical events and private memories are often felt as persistent but are in fact transfigured through interpretation and differing emphasis, faded by memory and rescaled by culture. The nocturnal sky, at least in our experience so far, is relentlessly ever-present – but astronomically speaking it is always new, unrepeatable.
Exhibition history:
BAK Center in Utrecht:_(link)