EXHIBITION GUIDE + CHECKLIST
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Gravity Well, an exhibition of recent multimedia video installations and photographic works by artist Chris O’Leary, explores the historical developments and technological mechanisms that have granted humans the ability to perceive the otherwise imperceptible cosmic phenomena of gravitational waves. O’Leary’s research-based art practice frequently toggles between the application of sophisticated scientific knowledge and the philosophical enigmas and existential dilemmas that such formulations produce, with a particular fascination for the advanced instrumentation required to perceive these mysterious underpinnings of the universe. While previous projects by O’Leary have explored various earthbound observatories and labs designed to detect everything from light particles to dark matter, his latest body of work focuses on the unique instruments used to sense the ripples in space-time caused by the collision of massive black holes thousands of light years away. Central to the exhibition’s presentation is documentary footage of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and its dual detectors in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. Through custom software, O’Leary combines video, sound, and images with generative effects in real time to exemplify the distortional vibrations of these gravitational waves. O’Leary further develops his artistic investigation of these themes through related large-scale photographic works cataloging the history and theory of the field, a series of 3D animated illusions presenting the anatomy of a gravitational wave, and a photographic film sculpture gathered from his extensive research at both LIGO facilities.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Christopher O’Leary is an artist, photographer and researcher. His work in photography expands from still images to video, animation, custom software, and other experimental processes. O’Leary’s projects are generated in dialogue with scientists and laboratories working on contemporary issues in astronomy, cosmology, environmental science, and other fields, across the globe. He was the first artist in residence at the Carnegie Observatories in Las Campanas Chile, and has worked with researchers at Caltech, LIGO Labs, the Smithsonian, UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, and more. He has been awarded a number of artist residencies including the Ucross Residency, the Playa Residency, and the Rockland Residency. His current research is about the science and observation of gravitational waves, which culminates in this solo exhibition at the Begovich Gallery at Cal State Fullerton in 2024. He is also in a group show highlighting the research archive at Caltech, in conjunction with the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time Artand-Science Collide initiative. O’Leary’s work has been shown in museums and galleries around the globe, in both art and science contexts. Chris lives and works in Los Angeles, California, and is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Pasadena City College.
Artist’s website: https://oleary.studio
WAVES + THE EXHIBITION
Gravitational waves are tiny ripples in spacetime. Though invisible, they are detected using a device known as a laser interferometer and travel at the speed of light at approximately 186,000 miles per second. In 2016, scientific history was made when faculty, staff, and students from CSU Fullerton’s Gravitational Wave Physics and Astronomy Center (GWPAC) were part of a larger team of universities and research centers that contributed to the first and later discoveries of gravitational-wave events, which confirmed Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity. Einstein’s mathematics showed that massive accelerating objects, such as neutron stars or black holes orbiting each other, disrupted spacetime so that ‘waves’ of undulating ripples would propagate in all directions away from the source.
Nearly 100 years later, Chris O’Leary and a team of artists and scientists presented a generative animation installation entitled Black Hole. It was commissioned for the Celebrating Einstein Conference at Montana State University in 2013. Using mathematically accurate prototypes, the installation depicted a dynamically generated model of a black hole and its accretion disc of gas and dust. This project was produced two years before the experimental confirmation of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitation-wave Observatory (LIGO) and its partners.
The presentation of O’Leary’s Gravity Well provides vital discourse in the arts at CSU Fullerton. Its relevance in generating expansive art-making practices, critical thinking, and immersive cross-disciplinary collaborations makes it the ideal exhibition to debut in the new gallery spaces associated with the modernization of the Visual Arts Complex. In the same way the gallery’s previous exhibitions connected contemporary visual culture to curricula, Gravity Well will engage multiple courses offered in the arts. The exhibition will also reach the other side of campus to the sciences. Furthermore, the spirit of the exhibition will contribute to a more extensive dialogue that focuses on the intersection of art and science currently happening at museums and science institutions across southern California.
Sources: Space Place, NASA; LIGO Caltech Photograph: HGA Architects, Los Angeles
Time Space Line
2024
Digital inkjet prints, lightboxes
Photo Assistant: Graham Akins
40 X 50 inches each
Time Space Line is a photographic triptych that charts the theory and history of gravitational wave science through historical documents, archival photographs, illustrations, and diagrams gathered from LIGO laboratories by the artist. It functions as part educational guide, part conceptual collage, and part “conspiracy wall” while laying out the major elements of the theory, instrumentation, and observation of gravitational waves. Across three large light boxes, the piece is illuminated in a rolling tricolor lighting process, creating the effect of white light while generating spectrum gradients and casting multicolored shadows. A 100-watt green laser physically bounces across the composition at the moment of exposure. It moves from one photograph to the next in great L-shaped forms, a motif found throughout the exhibition. The artist’s hand-written notes are pinned along with the documents, telling the one-hundred-year story that begins with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to the discovery of gravitational waves by LIGO and beyond.
Intersecting Planes:
Hanford XY, Livingston XY, Hanford X Livingston X 2024
Film positives, acrylic 8 x 10 x 10 inches each
While producing the video for the installation Gravity Well, O’Leary photographed the vast landscapes of the LIGO detectors in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. Each film exposure focuses on the individual X and Y arms of 4-kilometer-long concrete tunnels cutting through dramatically different terrains thousands of miles apart. The giant L-shape of these facilities would be visible from the air, but only a single arm can be seen by an individual from the ground, where O’Leary bases his perspective.
In Intersecting Planes, O’Leary displays 8x10 film positives as sculpture, creating perpendicular intersections of the two arms of LIGO Hanford, the two arms of LIGO Livingston, and a final piece combining both spaces. The translucent film allows one to see both arms or both facilities simultaneously. Intersecting Planes continues O’Leary thematic exploration of bi-location and the geometry of spacetime found throughout this exhibition. The visual motif of perpendicular planes is found in artworks across the show and is even reflected in the gallery’s wall design.
Gravity Well
2024
Single-channel projection, custom software, sound
In collaboration with Estevan Carlos Benson
Visualizing the outcome of scientific research and data has been an ongoing exploration of Chris O’Leary’s artistic practice. In the singlechannel documentary Gravity Well, the megastructures of the dual detector sites that form the Laser Interferometer GravitationalWave Observatory (LIGO) located in both Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana is the focal subject in his latest exhibition. Consisting of a series of wide-angled exterior shots of the two massive concrete structures at each site, the sequence of landscape views is disrupted by random displays of wave-formed patterns that allude to the spatial activities detected by LIGO. O’Leary achieves these animated distortions resembling gravitational waves using custom software that analyzes and interprets data taken directly from LIGO’s observational recordings. Each footage and its corresponding data are never repeated as the software processing in the background operates in real-time.
To expand the conceptual experience of the warping of space-time, O’Leary collaborated with composer and sound designer Estevan Carlos Benson. Like the randomization of visual data applied to the video component of Gravity Well, its complimenting soundscape produced by Benson is also generated in real-time. The result is grounded rather than synthesized, utilizing human vocals and bodygenerated sounds to create rhythmic elements.
Exhibition Dates: November 2, 2024 - May 17, 2025
Reception: November 2, 2024
Related Programming: Artist Lecture | April 21, 2025, 1:00 PM Building G - College of the Arts Galleries
Chris O’Leary: Gravity Well is presented in partnership with the programs in Creative Photography & Experimental Media, Game Art, Animation, & Immersive Media, and the Nicholas and Lee Begovich Gravitational Wave Physics and Astronomy Center (GWPAC) at CSUF. Curated by Jennifer Frias, Gallery Director/Curator, with an extended essay by James MacDevitt, Associate Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies at Cerritos College. Support is provided by the Art Alliance, CSUF’s Instructional Related Activities Grant, the College of the Arts, and the Department of Visual Arts.
Gravity Well: Chris O’Leary’s Visual Meditations on the Unseen Universe, an essay by James MacDevitt can found on the gallery’s website: arts.fullerton.edu/cotagalleries
Gallery exhibition guide and didactics: Jennifer Frias
Cover design: Jeff Cain
Installation photography: Nikolay Maslov
Learn more about the Nicholas & Lee Begovich Gravitational-Wave Center Physics & Astronomy Center at CSU Fullerton’s College of Natural Sciences & Mathematics
Information and video excerpts of Chris O’Leary’s collaboration with a team of artists and scientists on their commissioned presentation of Black Hole at the “Celebrating Einstein Conference” in 2013
800 N. State College Blvd. Fullerton, CA 92831
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Video still of Gravity Well, 2024 Single-channel projection, custom software, sound In collaboration with Estevan Carlos Benson