The Brilliance of Darkness, Karel Nel at Art First, LDN, 9 Sept - 9 Oct

Exhibition Description:

Karel Nel is the appointed project artist for COSMOS (The Cosmic Evolution Survey), the most comprehensive astronomy project ever undertaken. The project goal is to measure 2 square degrees of the universe using deep astronomy imaging to study the evolution of galaxies, galaxy clusters and dark matter structures, moving through greater and greater distances and hence further back in time. Effectively, the COSMOS project is observing the universe as it was near the beginning and as it evolved, coming forward in time to the present epoch.

Nel has been working with this growing team of astrophysicists over the past four years, attending their conferences in New York, Kyoto, Munich and Paris. He has covered great distances with them to view the firmament from isolated locations on the planet that are free from light pollution. These include, the Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea, a 13,000 ft high volcano in Hawaii, to the plains of St Augustine in New Mexico, where they have used The Very Large Array Telescope, and viewed the stars as our ancestors once did.

ART FIRST is privileged to present the first exhibition of work to emerge from the COSMOS Project. Karel Nel's artistic practice explores the concepts of art and science, grasping the manner in which they envisage one another, pushing towards the edge of new knowledge. He has chosen materials which reflect his innovative visual thinking, emphasising the substance of his art. Nel has partnered sparkling pure white salt crystals with with dense, 5.5 million year old black carboniferous dust. These images echo the galaxies in clusters and in grids, as Nel represents the findings of infinity emerging from the data and concepts released by the COSMOS Project itself.

Description:

Image: Hidden Beauty
2008
5.4 million year old carboniferous dust and atlantic salt crystals
100 x 100 cm

Karel Nel is an Associate Professor in Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He studied the links between art & science on a Fulbright scholarship in 1989 at Berkley University, California. Nel's work is resident in the major museum and corporate collections in South Africa and in the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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