Welcome to Cosmographica (version for art critics)
By deconstructing the artificial barrier between perception and representation, the astronomical artist attempts to transcend the cliches of traditional landscape art and guide the viewer to a hyper-real perspective in which familiar compositional elements (e.g. rocks, clouds, etc.) serve as comforting touchstones to ease the transition to an alien realm in which up becomes down, in becomes out, and past becomes future. Our reaction to the strangeness of the extraterrestrial environment serves as a metaphor for the existential rebellion of our primitive natures as we are forced to contend with a reality that demands pure rationality. Space is unforgiving, and mistakes can lead to sudden death. The metal and plastic technology that we use to explore space symbolizes our alienation from the natural, organic world of our ancestors.
The terror, however, is also suffused with beauty, and this is part of the appeal of the astronomical art genre. The viewer can gaze upon airless landscapes that are bereft of any earthly softness as an artist might contemplate a bare canvas: a place of potential, waiting patiently to be shaped or explored by human hands and minds. We project ourselves into these worlds, safely experiencing, for a time, the loneliness that each of us suppresses as we journey, encased in our spaceships of bone, from an unremembered origin to a problematic future.
As you explore the images on this site please bear in mind that they represent informed guesswork; the reality will not only be stranger, but much more beautiful.
Thanks for dropping by. (There is also a version of this introduction for regular folks.)
