In her new video and light installation Science, Fiction (Two), Diana Thater explores Earth's relationship with the cosmos and reflects on the critical role that the dung beetle—the only living creature known to use the Milky Way for orientation—serves in sustaining the natural ecosystem.
For the immersive installation, Thater used film footage of dung beetles (or rainbow scarabs) in the Sonoran Desert around Tucson, Arizona. Larger-than-life moving images of the iridescent scarabs float across the barrel-vaulted ceiling of SJMA's soaring central skylight gallery. Directly below this starry scene, a 16-by-20-by-8-foot box emits a soft yellow light like that of the sun. The entire gallery is infused with cosmic blue light—a metaphor for the dung beetle's perspective of the cosmos. Long interested in the mysteries of the night sky and of the natural world, Thater was inspired by a recent study that revealed that dung beetles use the Milky Way for nocturnal orientation.
Also on view are video walls with two works: Visual Voyage: Milky Way to the Virgo Cluster, 2015, and Aquarius Halos, 2015. Thater gathered digital animations of the Milky Way and the greater galactic neighborhood from leading astronomers and astrophysicists from throughout the world, advised by Puragra GuhaThakurta, an international expert on galaxy formation and evolution at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Thater synchronized on two video arrays—each comprised of nine screens—these scientific visualizations of deep space and galactic time.
"In these works, Thater encourages viewers to ponder the vastness of the universe and to alter their perception of time," said Rory Padeken, assistant curator at SJMA. "As Thater showcases the technological achievements of 21st-century astronomy and introduces audiences to abstract concepts of time and space, she also aesthetically conveys the sublime aspects of the cosmic imagination."
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Since the early 1990s, Diana Thater has created film and video installations in which she suffuses architectural space with layers of color, imagery, and light. In her work, Thater contemplates the relationship between humans and nature, and investigates the recurring themes of natural diversity, wildlife, and conservation. Los Angeles County Museum of Art will present a retrospective devoted to Thater's work in the fall of 2015. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at many museums and galleries around the world, including Dia Center for the Arts, New York; Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany; Kunsthaus Graz, Austria; Museum of Contemporary Art, Siegen, Germany; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Thater's work is represented in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Beta Space: Diana Thater is sponsored by Bank of America, Applied Materials, the Myra Reinhard Family Foundation, Melanie and Peter Cross, and Theres and Denis Rohan. Display technology is provided by Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.
