2021 Venice Biennial:
Time Space Existence Exhibit

David Yepez experiments with various materials and techniques to visualize 21st century Astrophysics and Mathematics. In designing both functional and decorative objects, he applies digital fabrication, IOT technologies, traditional craft, and processes developed for mass manufacturing.  The designs are made with attention to how the audience would interact physically and intellectually with the objects in space. Yepez’s philosophy is that chairs are meant to be sat upon and textures are meant to be felt; the more engaging the experience can be with an object the more real it can become to the viewer.

David Yepez finds inspiration in the theories of those who look beyond the capability of our current understanding; collectively pursuing a future that they will not live to see.  Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking died before some of their key theories could be proven or even before the technologies to prove them had even been invented.  Yepez’s current work riffs upon those themes and represents them visually. Infinite Type reads signals of satellites used by SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) and converts them into hexadecimal code which is typed by a typewriter.  The marks create distinctive ink on paper works depicting purely digital code, illustrating the abstract nature of this information. Black Dwarf is a representation of the theoretical end of stars. The first star to go black will be a charred remnant of a brilliant solar body with a dazzling background of shining stars in the void of space. Starcatcher conceptualizes future instruments based on Freeman Dyson’s devices capable of capturing the energy of stars. Will devices such as these one day power interstellar exploration? Or will they be dismissed as science fiction from the past?

Two millennia ago, Roman naturalist Pliney The Elder was tasked to write a compendium of all the knowledge of the Roman Empire. The work still exists as one of the earliest sources of general information. Today, we study this work as a hopeful reminder that even if our conclusions are not infallible, the human quest for understanding is everlasting. Throughout human history of exploration and knowledge, artists have used visual media to represent the questions and discoveries of their time. David Yepez seeks to capture a contemporary understanding of the 21st century and create visual additions to the encyclopedia, asking: What will the future say of our current perspective? Will it look like magic, divine intervention, or the beginning of great understanding? Our time is the age of stars, our space is the ever expanding universe, and our existence is finite.

Works included in the exhibit:
Infinite Type, Blackstar Console, Black Dwarf, Doppler, Starcatcher Club, Herringbone Tessellation, Mira Ora

Space and the work of David Yepez

by Nicholas Fevelo 

In the ever-expanding milieu of images, if we had to search for something digitally akin to Michelangelo’s hand of God seen in “Creation of Adam” we may be able to agree on the images from the Hubble Telescope.

To see life and death at galactic scale is close to the sublime, or at least a simulation of the sublime.  Hubble's images of dreamlike celestial forms place the awe of the cosmos in a two-dimensional form we humans can visually digest.

Yet, like Michelangelo’s "Creation of Adam," these images are the product of human aesthetic choice. Layered technologies registering different wavelengths of light and radiation are composited to create these images. The colors are rendered by data sets.  Infrared and ultraviolet light, both of which we cannot see without the aid of technology, are incorporated into these images. The data capture is monochromatic. To translate the images to red, green and blue the images are actually captured three times. One for each spectrum and converted later.

What is "real" about these images? They are really composites of different dimensions. We do not experience these dimensions together, usually. To see ultraviolet light we usually exclude the others.  With infrared cameras we also exclude the other forms of light. These are different visual dimensions. 

3-D gets all the credit but if you add time, we live in 4-D. Our coordinates in spacetime are 4-D. Dimensions can be merely be the metric of measurement or the starting point of a measurement. The best visualization of this abstraction is seen in the 2001 film Donnie Darko when the main character Donnie played by Jake Gyllenhaal is walking through a house party while a semi-transparent worm-like form shows his future path through spacetime.

Hubble's images are high tech paintings informed by captured data. All of this data is translated to our most efficient way of understanding the world - visualization.

Space to most of us is an abstraction. The scale of the universe, spacetime, the Big Bang, the origin of the information written in our DNA, exist to us in the abstract. We use our higher order sense making and scientific empiricism to add weight to our theories.  Science always leaves open the humble possibility that we are wrong. Science seeks to explain the answers to the smallest questions and the largest questions, which ultimately wind up in space.

The easiest way to share these abstract concepts with other humans is to do so visually i.e. dendrograms, pictures, illustrations, 3-D models etc.  We evolved to scan our visual realm for threats and anomalies while pursuing resources. A 2-D stickman would have a difficult time imagining our 3-D world, as we would find difficultly understanding the existence in a 4-D world.

Aesthetics are interwoven in the communication these abstractions but the aesthetic usually takes a back seat to the viewer.  Beautiful art, when the contemporary artist has the courage to make something truly beautiful, is aesthetics upfront and with pride. The artist can choose to layer meaning into the piece or not. The viewer depending on their level of intellectual investment can choose to engage with the intent of the artist or not.

What happens when the aesthetic melts into the concept? Artists have raged against the aesthetic throughout postmodernism. But what now after we have unpacked all that baggage of the 20th Century? We re-establish a frontier.

In a centuries old building with a terracotta roof in Venice at the 2021 Venice Biennale sit 7 sculptures by the artist David Yepez under the name "Age of Stars."  David’s work is informed by his personal interest in astrophysics and mathematics.  

The materials, techniques, technology, themes and function draw from across the human experience and spacetime.  There is handcraft and computer navigated cutting in the work as well as ancient Japanese charred wood finishing techniques.

In the multi-media piece “Infinite Type,” a feed from S.E.T.I. the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, is translated to hexadecimal and typed by a vintage automated typewriter.  The data is typed on a recirculating cloth page that becomes an undecipherable ink stain.  The raw S.E.T.I. data is just as abstract. The cloth, the sound of the vintage typewriter, the missing hands as it types by itself remind us of the order we strive to create in the vast chaos. The typewriter's loneliness echoes space and a world without us.

In the piece “Starcatcher Club” a chair welcomes visitors to sit.  There is comfort on top of discomfort. The clam-like upholstery is inviting while the outside shell is adorned in fine glass shards.  From afar they resemble the cosmos but must be touched gently.  David plays homage to the tradition of artist-as-naughty with its push and pull of comfort and danger.  

 In the dual wall pieces “Doppler” and “Black Dwarf” made with sultry and silky dark finishes from wood, foam, acrylic paint, and glass, the viewer is again hit with the abstractions of space. As objects they are beautiful but the Doppler effect phenomena and far off and away event of a star’s heat death referenced in “Black Dwarf” wrap celestial abstraction in a word beyond us.

Two other paired pieces “Herringbone Tessellation” and “Miura-ori” made of foam, ink on paper and paint take their form from deceivingly simple yet complex origami mountain and valley folding pattern invented by astrophysicist Koryo Miura.

“Blackstar Console” is a smooth to the touch wall mounted table-top console made from some of the most time-less materials of oak and marble.  The carving was done by computer-navigated carving and finished with an ancient Japanese charring technique done by hand. Its wave –like relief patterns in charred oak are inspired by warped gravitational patterns.   “Blackstar Console” is the intersection of tradition and cutting edge fabrication. 

Artist David Yepez continues in the ancient tradition of looking up when many of us contemporary humans are looking down. We spent hundreds of thousands of years looking up to the stars. Although they are diluted by street lights and compete with the blue light of our digital devices they remain the frontier canvas where we work in the greatest abstractions.