Cosmic Night Shade

A perspectivally distorted geometric shape is painted on the exhibition space’s walls. From certain viewpoints this shape appears as a three-walled proscenium opening a trompe-l’oeil space beyond the actual gallery walls. Onto one of these “proscenium walls” the video is projected at an oblique angle, heightening the sense of receding space. The video is based on a NASA animation of asteroid 433 Eros. 433 Eros is part of the Amor group of asteroids and its geographical features are named after famous lovers from history and mythology. NASA’s crude animation of space-probe images was restaged with a potato, the quintessential terrestrial, bland vegetable, standing in for the elusive “eroticized” asteroid.