Mr. and Mrs. Chelsey G. Magruder II Gallery
A Day of Four Sunsets presents a new body of work by Miami-based artist Dennis Scholl, exploring the poetics of space exploration through assemblages of NASA memorabilia. The exhibition takes its title from astronaut John Glenn’s experience of witnessing four sunsets as he orbited Earth in 1962, evoking themes of time, memory, and the sublime vastness of the cosmos. Glenn’s joyful experience contrasts with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince: “You know – one loves the sunset when one is so sad…” said the little prince. “Were you so sad then on the day of the forty-four sunsets?” asked the narrator. But the little prince made no reply.”
Scholl’s work, rooted in the language of historical artifacts and collective memory, arranges space exploration ephemera into compositions structured by the dodecagon – a recurring motif in his practice that represents cyclical time and cosmic order. Over the past decade, he has meticulously gathered NASA-related materials, including mission patches, declassified documents, photographs, and newspaper clippings, integrating them into intricate assemblages that reframe our understanding of humanity’s relationship with the unknown.
