An der Hülben

Andy Boot

November 27, 2013 – January 25, 2014

Andy Boot, 2013Installation viewLayr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013
Installation view
Layr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013Installation viewLayr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013
Installation view
Layr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013Installation viewLayr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013
Installation view
Layr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013Installation viewLayr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013
Installation view
Layr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013Installation viewLayr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013
Installation view
Layr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013Installation viewLayr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013
Installation view
Layr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013Installation viewLayr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013
Installation view
Layr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013Installation viewLayr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013
Installation view
Layr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013Installation viewLayr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot, 2013
Installation view
Layr An der Hülben, Vienna

Andy Boot’s exhibition is based on the so-called existence of the average color of the universe. Incidentally discovered by a team of astronomers at Johns Hopkins university in 2001-02 while apparently “examining spectral analysis of different galaxies to study star formation” (Wikipedia), the color was initially thought to be turquoise. But it was soon corrected and coined ‘cosmic latte’ while a certain Peter Drum (astronomer) was drinking a ‘latte’ at a Starbucks and, “Drum noticed that the color of the universe as displayed in the Washington Post was the same color as his latte.” (Again, Wikipedia) It is hard to say what is more absurd, the fact that there is an average, all-encompassing color in the universe (and that it is basically white), the attempt to identify it, or that it is named after a Starbucks beverage, which itself issues from the Italian word for milk (either an artless fool or a splendid cynic, Drum’s nomination could be an act of painfully un-imaginative mediocrity or a stroke of wry jaundiced genius).

For the series of sculptures in this exhibition, Boot has gone through a complex process related to the figuration of cosmic latte. Studying a score of images on the internet, he did his best to identify and demarcate the existence of this color in those images (dissolved into cosmic latte, their actual content is irrelevant). Those cosmic latte sections of the images are then cut out (via photoshop), so to speak, printed up and transformed into free-standing, three-dimensional sculptures, which are fashioned out of standard MDF with a matt-white coat (paper pressed into the MDF). Lest the shapes claim too much individual character, the walls of the exhibition space have also been painted cosmic latte, making it such that the objects could conceivably vanish, like camouflage, into their context.

Thus literalized, cosmic latte here offers the simulated opportunity to examine that which could either be said to flatten out all nuance, translating our irreducible spectrums into a totalizing average, or unify us with the sun, the moon and the stars, linking our solar system with every other via a single milky hue.

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