Space may be the final frontier, as the saying goes, but it’s also a concept we Earthlings hold in our everyday collective memory. Major spacefaring milestones left long-lasting marks on our culture, like the shared elation of seeing astronauts walk on the moon, or the shared tragedy of watching the Challenger break apart. We even remember where we were at the time, if we were around.
It’s this collective memory that artist Dennis Scholl is exploring in his Orlando Museum of Art exhibition, “A Day of Four Sunsets.” The title comes from astronaut John Glenn’s 1962 space mission when he witnessed four sunsets in one day while orbiting the Earth. Scholl has collected and assembled space race memorabilia, using his filmmaker’s eye to focus us on the larger shared meaning of tangible, sometimes time-worn items.
“I ask almost everybody I meet, that I talk about art with, ‘What is your most vivid collective memory? What is a memory that you share with the world or the country?’ And for people of a certain vintage, like myself, one of the most known collective memories is ‘man on the moon,’” said Scholl. He explained the exhibit as “an examination of the space race, and what we went through to get on the moon, and the price that was paid, also, for people. There were a lot of people that passed during the space race. So it's about the price we paid to get on the moon.”
The collective memory element is explored through deliberately assembled photographs, artistically-presented ViewMaster toys loaded with space-related images, and even a presentation of Tang drink powder. The orange beverage was emblematic of space exploration for kids growing up in the 1960s and 1970s.
“I was certainly one of those kids,” Scholl laughed. “I drank as much Tang as I could, because back then, I wanted to be an astronaut. And so the show contains a piece which is about six feet by six feet on a flat panel, almost like a table. And in the middle of it is a jar of late ‘60s, early ‘70s Tang. I don't recommend you open it and use it, but around the table, around the jar, in the center, are 12 piles of contemporary Tang, which looked delicious!”
The Miami-based artist says his recent visit to the museum illustrated Orlando’s unique relationship with the space program.
“They took me on the roof, and I got to see my first space launch last week,” said Scholl. “Oh, I could see the rocket go up in the sky, I could see the bright yellow burning ball as it went. So, to have [the exhibition] in Orlando is really a great chance for the community who would appreciate this work more than any other community in the country.”
