Sunspots by Day, Asteroids by Night (1-20)

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© René Treviño
Sunspots by Day, Asteroids by Night (1-20)
© René Treviño
Artist/Maker (Mexican-American, born 1972)
Date2023
MediumArchival digital prints with mixed media on bamboo paper
DimensionsSheet: 22 × 16 in. (55.9 × 40.6 cm) Frame: 26 1/4 × 19 × 2 1/4 in. (66.7 × 48.3 × 5.7 cm)
Credit LineProduction and purchase supported by the Daniel W. Dietrich '64 Fund for Innovation in the Arts
Object number2024.14.1-20
Not on view
DescriptionChristian Heinrich Friedrich Peters served as Hamilton College’s first professor of astronomy from 1858 until his death in 1890. As part of his preparation for the exhibition, "René Treviño: Stab of Guilt," Treviño explored the journals, correspondence, scientific instruments, and research documents belonging to Peters in the college’s archives and was particularly inspired by a suite of twenty charts the astronomer published in 1882 as "Celestial Charts Made at the Litchfield Observatory of Hamilton College." Two of the original charts were presented alongside a series of mixed-media collages by Treviño—entitled "Sunspots by Day, Asteroids by Night" (2023)—that were created using facsimiles of Peters’s star charts. In these works, Treviño builds upon the astronomer’s data and visualizations by adding brightly rendered imagery and layering materials to chart his own theoretical constellations, here in the whimsical shape of flies or beaded cowboy boots. This series offers an alternate view of the universe—one that is expansive, imaginative, and ever in flux.

Additional Details

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