0187
18-09-2011
NGC 5194 OF / OR M51
Paul Vendel & Sandra de Wolf
Artist
The manuscript looks like a block of petrified sandy desert with a sedimentary stratification; like the pages of a book that has got wet. It contains a glass, filled to the brim with water, which is placed in an agreed location. A wonder then manifests itself in the form of a monumental whirlpool. The ‘agreed location’ is the only visible detail in the sandy plain and resembles a scorched UFO landing site.
Precisely which story is told is pleasantly unclear, but countless associations force themselves upon us: the desert as the location of one of the Biblical plagues, or the Biblical wonders and apparitions that often took place in the quiet solitude of the beholder.
Via a Google search, the title NGC 5194 or M 51 yields a beautiful spiral galaxy, the M 51 Whirlpool Galaxy. Here, the manuscript’s true dimensions unfold.
The desert as the best place to observe and study the immense star-spangled sky. Each water molecule is itself a galaxy where there is life on at least one planet.
The whirlpool as ‘eye of the believer’
-PV/SW