The Universe is Opening

Rita Dibert

Opening: June 10 5:30 pm

Viewing: June 9 until June 20

It was late June 2025. I was starting to feel like the studio might be a possibility soon. Quite by chance I happened on an announcement on the BBC website of the first image from the new Vera Rubin telescope in Chile. The following sentence jumped out at me: “The Vera C Rubin Observatory, home to the world’s most powerful digital camera, (3,200 mega pixels) promises to transform our understanding of the universe.” 1

I am a photographer. I have read science fiction since I was in elementary school. Perhaps things may change drastically while I am still on this planet…This new camera, composed of a three-mirror camera setup 1.65m x 3m and weighing 2,800 kg will answer questions about dark matter, the possibility of a ninth planet in our solar system and it could detect potentially destructive asteroids before the hit earth, possibly. Yet the most exciting aspect is the colour of that first photo. Luminous blues of the Lagoon nebulae, haunting depths and sparkling lights in the Virgo cluster, which is 100 billion times the size of our familiar Milky Way. Absorbing abstraction.

Not feeling up to painting at my usual 1.5 x 3metre scale (I may never be able to manage that scale again. I hope so but this is an uncertain universe.) So, I started small. A5. Limited colour, at times almost none.

But I also started a new medium. Working in reverse. I wanted to tax my foggy brain, wake up whatever was still there. I watched hundreds of videos, including those of a New Yorker in a neighbourhood I was familiar with. He gifted his audience with everything he knew as a painter and a printmaker. He also allowed us to know that he was going through extended chemo. (Prior to finding him I had watched hours of disparate videos that led me down paths I discovered were dead ends, or blind alleys. Or meaningless rabbit holes.) His hair is now growing back. So, this exhibition is dedicated to a wonderful human, Fulton Sim. Hope is everywhere in our universe, even the small one we actually have a reasonable idea of at the moment.

{ Gallery 1 }