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Celestial Photography Turns Noguchi Sculptures into Asteroids

Artist Leah Raintree takes the sculptures of Isamu Noguchi and reworks them into images of astronomical mystery.

Leah Raintree, Another Land: Miharu, 2016

. Images courtesy of The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York

One artist’s sculptures are another artist’s astrophotography explorations in Another Land: After Noguchi, on view at The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City. In this solo exhibition, artist Leah Raintree has taken works by legendary artist, architect, and founder of the same museum, Isamu Noguchi, and photographed them to look like otherworldly celestial bodies. It's a gesture that is both made in homage to Noguchi and a recontextualization of his work, nearly half a century later.

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Another Land: Sun at Noon, 2016, Leah Raintree

The highly textural and ambiguously geologic masses that float in the void within Raintree’s images are the calculated results of clever angles and strobe lighting. The photographer manages to pinpoint and frame certain sections of Noguchi’s sculptures to look like asteroids, craters, planetary surfaces, and in some cases, completely foreign bodies that seem to concoct new narratives about celestial life. Raintree add to the art’s mythology, emphasizing its ability to extend beyond the pre-planned intentions of the artist.

Leah Raintree, Another Land: Euripides, 2016

Although the results are both visually intriguing and technically impressive, one can’t help but wonder what motivated Raintree to reframe Noguchi’s sculptures to look like astronomical forms: “I began thinking about Noguchi during a visit to the Noguchi Museum in 2013. I was fascinated by his late stone sculptures that involve a meeting of the artist’s hand, technology, and natural qualities of geology. Noguchi was producing these works in the 1960s and 70s, so I became interested in the cultural context that shaped his thinking and process,” Raintree explains to The Creators Project.

Leah Raintree, Another Land: Lunar Table, 2016

“I found that Noguchi and I not only share a love of stone, but also a fascination with technology and its role in shaping our understanding of the universe. Then, in 2014, the European Space Agency (ESA) reached the target of its Rosetta mission, landing its Philae probe on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. As Rosetta orbited Comet 67P, it gathered data-driven images that were streamed back to Earth,” adds Raintree. “These exquisite images, each depicting seemingly different objects cast against the darkness of space, ultimately set the stage for my response to Noguchi’s work.”

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Another Land: After Noguchi, installation view. Photo: Nicholas Knight

Although the Philae probe is a recent development in space exploration, Noguchi’s sculptures used in Raintree’s photographs were created in the 60s and 70s, during the height of the Space Age. The intersection, but difference in cultural context was an important aspect of Raintree’s process: “I’m working in an entirely different time than Noguchi and the project reflects that. Noguchi experienced profound examples of human impact on Earth during his lifetime, alongside the first images of Earth taken from space. You can see how these experiences translate in his work,” tells Raintree.

Leah Raintree, Another Land: Emanation, 2016

“Today, our awareness—and anxieties—of human impact have grown alongside technologies that extend our understanding further into space," she says. "Perhaps I was as interested in these connections as much as Noguchi’s artwork alone. It’s never been a project driven by nostalgia for art or technologies of another time, but rather one that is interested in context.”

Another Land: After Noguchi will be on view through January 8, 2017 at The Noguchi Museum. More of Leah Raintree’s works can be viewed on her website, here.

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