Eduardo Kac

How does one make art in space? And why? Eduardo Kac, a major figure of bio-art and transgenic art, put this question to the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet during ESA’s Proxima mission in 2016. The answer they devised together is disarmingly simple: to make, from materials already available on board the station, an instrument of observation and reflection — an inner telescope, turned not towards the stars but towards the inside of oneself.

The resulting work questions the fundamental conditions of artistic creation: what remains of art when material constraints are absolute? What does it mean to look at the Earth from orbit? How is the body of an artist — or of any human being — transformed in weightlessness? The exhibition Télescope intérieur at Galerie Charlot brings together the space-born work and the pieces that respond to it, forming a dialogue between the infinitely large and the infinitely intimate. Kac pursues here his recurring inquiry into the boundaries of the living, the cosmos and the human, in a setting that touches on cosmic experience without ever losing sight of the essential: what happens within.

Galerie Charlot presents the second solo exhibition by the artist Eduardo Kac, “Télescope Intérieur” (Inner Telescope). The exhibition grew out of a work conceived by Eduardo Kac and realised in space in collaboration with the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet during the European Space Agency (ESA) “Proxima” mission, launched in November 2016.

Made from materials already available on the space station, the work “Télescope Intérieur”, which also gives the exhibition its title, is an instrument of observation and poetic reflection that leads us to rethink our relationship to the world and our place in the universe.

It consists of a form that has neither top nor bottom, neither front nor back. Seen from one angle, it reveals the word “MOI” (“ME”), evoking Humanity, a collective self; from another viewpoint, one sees a human figure with its umbilical cord cut, a symbol of emancipation from our gravitational limits.

Since the 1980s, Eduardo Kac has been theorising and producing works of art and poetry that challenge the limits of gravity. In 2007, he published his manifesto “Space Poetry”. In 2017, the artist’s dream finally came true: creating a work directly in space, in a state of weightlessness aboard the International Space Station.

A selection of drawings, embroideries, photographs, videos and artist’s books will illustrate this adventure at Galerie Charlot until 27 July.

This visionary project by Eduardo Kac was made possible by the Observatoire de l’Espace, the arts-science laboratory of CNES (the French space agency), with the assistance of ESA and the support of the Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso.