2018
Solo exhibition at Sogn og Fjordane Art Museum
Including the works
The Distance to the Horizon, video; 26:34
Enlightenment, Side panels from steam powered rocket, wire
The Frisbee Perspective, metal, styrofoam, acrylic plaster, light source
The exhibition The Frisbee Perspective is inspired by the Flat Earth Movement’s claim that the Earth is shaped like a frisbee, and by Mad Mike Hughes’ ambition to travel into space to determine its shape with his own eyes. The suspended sculpture Enlightenment is made from side panels of Hughes’ steam-powered rocket, which he sold to help finance the journey.
The frisbee-shaped sculpture series consists of identical forms positioned at different angles and illuminated by a single light source. The resulting shadows, together with the shadows cast by the gently moving suspended panels, demonstrate how perception is shaped by bodily situated perspective: the same object can appear differently depending on where it is viewed from. The video The Distance to the Horizon documents a journey at sea undertaken in search of an embodied perception of the Earth’s curvature.
The Enlightenment paradox between the aspiration toward objective, measurable knowledge and the recognition that all understanding of the world is also situated, embodied, and dependent on sensory experience is reactivated in contemporary political debates around “post-truth”, where questions of how knowledge is produced, validated, and trusted have again become contested. Together, these dynamics form a central turning point in the exhibition.
Following the exhibition opening, Hughes was invited to Aldea to lead a workshop on rocket building. In 2020, during an attempted rocket launch, he tragically lost his life.
