Kepler-16b (Framed Paper-Cut Artwork) Artwork

An original paper-cut artwork from Owen's first US solo exhibition 'Observations of the Unknown', held at ARGONAUT Gallery in San Francisco in 2018. These seemingly abstract pieces tell the tale of newly discovered solar systems and exoplanets; planets that orbit stars outside of our own solar system. Kepler is a space observatory launched by NASA in 2009, with the aim to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way galaxy in search of new exoplanets. It has discovered a staggering number of exoplanets nearing 2,500 since it’s launch, including a host of Earth-sized planets which orbit the habitable zone of their stars known as the Goldilocks Zone, where the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold and so leading to the possibility of life. Nobody actually knows exactly what these new planets and star systems look like, and so far visuals tend to be created using educated guess work. Taking a different approach, Owen decided to visualise his chosen findings using series of forms, rings, starburst and swirls that represent details such as the orbital periods, mass, radius and age, taking the viewer on their own journey around the artwork. Owen brought the pieces to life using hand-crafted layers constructed from a mixture of physical paper-cuttings. The result is a series of deeply layered pieces playing with scale and hierarchy, that communicate data from Kepler’s mission whilst abstractly spelling out the names of each planet and star system featured.