Jumpsuits & Teleporters

Vija Celmins, Moon Surface (Luna 9) #1, 1969, Graphite on acrylic ground on paper, 13 3/4 x 18 1/2”, MoMA, Mrs. Florene M. Schoenborn Fund. © 2010 Vija Celmins

Jennifer Wiseman on Vija Celmins’s Galaxy (1999)

As a professional astronomer with more than a passing knowledge of the views of space from the Hubble telescope, my first reaction to Vija Celmins’s rendition of a Hubble image was a sense of unfamiliarity and rediscovery I did not expect. The Hubble Deep Field, represented here in her work, was created by pointing the telescope at a relatively “average” region of space with no known outstanding features. Light was collected from the same small field of view or several days, thereby detecting even the faintest glimmer of distant objects. What emerges in the resulting image is a fantastical array of colourful lights, like fuzzy gems against the backdrop of dark, empty space. When one realises that each dot of light in the image is an entire galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars, the response is always one of astonished humility, whether from a scientist or a casual observer.

What Celmins masterfully achieves is a new perspective on Hubble’s view of the universe, spawning my own reaction of rediscovery. For when the image from the telescope is examined, the usual immediate response is to peer into the details of individual galaxies, noting the beauty of colours and spiral arms and diverse shapes. The scientist will take the focus on detail to even greater depths, asking: “How distant is this galaxy?”; “Which camera was used for this image?”; “What types of stars make up this cluster?” In contrast, by removing the distractions of colour and detail, Celmins enables us to focus on the view as a whole, discovering a pattern of light on a background sea of darkness. She excels at noticing and re-creating the large-scale patterns of exquisite beauty in nature often overlooked: skyscapes, desert floors and ocean waves. Here, her display of galaxies is reminiscent of the words in Genesis: “And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.” She has captured a new essence of the Hubble Deep Field - a grand pattern representing unfathomable numbers of places as yet unexplored. We are reminded that we are part of something bright, immense and sublime. (via)