Observations from the Unknown
Owen's first US solo exhibition held at ARGONAUT Gallery in San Francisco in 2018. The show was informed by nine years of groundbreaking celestial data gathered by the NASA Kepler Spacecraft, which coincidentally ceased it's mission during the course of Owen's show.
These seemingly abstract pieces tell the tale of newly discovered solar systems and exoplanets; planets that orbit stars outside of our own solar system. To celebrate Kepler's nine year mission Owen selected nine of its greatest findings to visualise for this exhibition.
Kepler is a space observatory launched by NASA in 2009, with the aim to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way galaxy in search of new exoplanets. It has discovered a staggering number of exoplanets nearing 2,500 since it’s launch, including a host of Earth-sized planets which orbit the habitable zone of their stars known as the Goldilocks Zone, where the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold and so leading to the possibility of life.
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For the show, I picked out nine of Kepler’s greatest findings and used the data gathered by the spacecraft about their orbital periods, mass, radius and age, to create an array of concentric rings, starbursts and graphic swirls, brought to life using a limited palette of handcut paper layers.
Nobody actually knows exactly what these new planets and star systems look like, and so far visuals tend to be created using educated guess work. Taking a different approach, Owen decided to visualise his chosen findings using series of forms, rings, starburst and swirls that represent details such as the orbital periods, mass, radius and age, taking the viewer on their own journey around the artwork.
Owen brought the pieces to life using hand-crafted layers constructed from a mixture of physical papercuttings and experimental materials. The result is a series of deeply layered pieces playing with scale and hierarchy, that communicate data from Kepler’s mission whilst abstractly spelling out the names of each planet and star system featured. In addition to the papercut artworks, Owen also created several large scale pieces including free-standing artworks and wall hangings.
The handcut artworks were exhibited across the West Coast of the US at venues including Team One and David & Goliath, alongside a selection of new large-scale artworks, pushing his handcrafted layered style into exciting new territories. At Argonaut Gallery, where the exhibition first opened, Owen also held a course of workshops which allowed visitors the chance to try out some paper-cutting themselves.
© Owen Gildersleeve 2023