![]() ![]() What does it mean, the work seems to ask, for the infinity at the center of each star to double as a result of their collision, and for our earthly physical labor-represented by poured and ploughed glass-to intersect these cosmic dramas? We are thus invited to contemplate the paradox of creative expansion resulting from cosmic detonations (like the Big Bang), and to question the meaning of our activities and agency within epic cosmic dramas. As with Albuquerque’s prints, we are transported beyond the earth to reencounter the universe and our position relative to it, here through hypnotic binoculars or reflection pools. Historically a precious hue entailing origins “beyond the sea” and the power to induce spiritual awakening, ultramarine blue alludes to the stars’ mystical dance beyond earthly horizons.Īnother pair of opposing spirals referencing the sea and its celestially driven tides erupts in Carol Saindon’s “Outside of Inside” (2019), where stars reflected in shattered blue glass gravitationally swirl in a binary star system on a collision course. ![]() The first artist to do installation work at the poles, Albuquerque initially, in 2006, mapped the overhead positions of the 99 brightest stars during the summer solstice on the Antarctic snow with 99 ultramarine blue fiberglass spheres. Commemorating large spiral chains trekked in the snow by Albuquerque’s collaborators in the Arctic and Antarctica, human footsteps here again enacted the passage of celestial time. Evincing the basic geometry of a mandala-a symbol, across myriad spiritual traditions, of the universe and of the wholeness or center of the self-these spirals further align us with the earth and ourselves by centering our gaze and awareness on the planet. Our meditative expedition continues in the Main Gallery, where graphic opposing spirals in Lita Albuquerque’s “South Pole Activation” (2014) and “North Pole Activation” (2014) signify the movement of the stars across each pole as the earth rotates on its axis and around the sun. Lita Albuquerque, South Pole Activation (2014) The subtle spiraling of sculptural orbs between the still scrims invokes a meditative trance through unrushed footsteps we retrace eons of elapsed time from our modern universe at the entrance to the Big Bang at the back wall, and through the spacious silence of our bodies we extrapolate the artists’ primal blobs, swirls and bars into the explosive and exquisite drama driving the universe’s generative expansion. While the installation grew out of Crotty’s residency with astronomy researchers at UC Santa Cruz in partnership with the Lick Observatory, the artists opted for pastel colors and childlike shapes and materials such as glitter and microbeads in lieu of literal depictions of supernovae, galaxies, the spectra and exoplanets, beckoning us to wonder our way through the bioresin-coated netting (referencing space plasma and amniotic fluid) like children in an enchanting fairy tale of our origins. ![]() Husband and wife Russell Crotty and Laura Gruenther’s installation “Look Back in Time” (2016) slices the 14 billion-year history of the universe into epochal pages that fill the Doyle’s Project Gallery. Through meaningfully warped timeframes and spatial scales, the works guide us in turn through the cosmos-macrocosmically with the aid of astronomical tools, and microcosmically through our bodies as cavities of spiritual wonder-collectively inviting us to reconsider and resolve our position within it. While created separately by five artists and three artist teams over the course of several years, the works’ interpretive liberties with astronomy data and history reflect stunningly common colors, placidity and mandala-like geometries evidencing Jung’s notion of synchronicity, or the uncanny coincidence of events pointing to a shared undercurrent of symbols and aspirations. Doyle Arts Pavilion in Costa Mesa, curated by gallery director Tyler Stallings to coincide with the opening of Orange Coast College’s state-of-the-art planetarium this month, interweaves scientific explorations of the cosmos with the mysticism of Jung’s collective unconscious.
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