The Space Between

The Space Between
2008-2010

Space and stars. Where does this enthusiasm, this desire, this longing come from? Is it innate in me? Is it from childhood? Do I have a specific memory to relate to, like lying down on the beach, at night, looking at the stars on a clear summer night? Or is this longing for stars a product of an image coming from popular culture, a movie, for instance? Is it an image coming from a film less real than an image I could have experienced, as a real phenomena? I would definitely have experienced starry nights, even in the ever-rainy coastal town where I grew up. Surely there would be such nights, surely I spent nights on the beaches, but I don’t have any memories about stars. At the age of 6, perhaps 7, from the stars, came like out of a dream Virginia Madsen with “a beginning is a very delicate time”, in Dune, the David Lynch film. What I like about the stars, the space, is the idea of the beginnings. The abstract images of the space, like the ones taken by the telescope Hubble, suggest many possibilities but give away none. The space is unreachable, only can be looked from far, far away. The space is to be desired, never experienced. One can only imagine.

In 2008, I began working on a series of artworks inspired by space images, from NASA website. The artworks are the photo album from a journey that couldn't happen. But I was there somehow, trying to contain those “beginnings”, to save them for later. The Space Between is a space I still long to go.

London, 28 November 2022