'Mansions of the Zodiac' by Charles Ross brings the cosmos down to a human scale

TAOS — Charles Ross’ exhibition, “Mansions of the Zodiac,” at the Harwood Museum of Art is a representation of mind-bogglingly vast cosmic cycles, but what makes it great are the small, human touches.

The exhibition centers around a suite of collage paintings depicting the 12 astrological ages, from Libra to Aquarius, plus a nearly 19-foot-wide mapping of the complete 12-age cycle of nearly 26,000 years, titled “Point Source/Star Apace: Weave of Ages.” Each piece is constructed from Xeroxed pages of a star atlas compiled by 20th century amateur astronomer Hans Vehrenberg.

Ross began these pieces in the mid-1970s, just as he was starting to build his magnum opus, a monumental astral observatory, titled “Star Axis,” in the deserts of eastern New Mexico. “Star Axis” remains incomplete, but, according to the website staraxis.org, it is estimated to open by 2028, around the time the artist will turn 90.

When I saw “Mansions of the Zodiac” in person, I immediately thought of Caio Fonseca’s geometric paintings, which they vaguely resemble. The Uruguayan American’s constructivist-inspired forms combine straight and curved lines, and he usually speckles his off-white areas with dots of spattered paint. The difference is that Ross’s geometries are not intuitive but follow the dictates of math and science. Likewise, what look like paint spatters are actually photo-negative images of the stars. While Fonseca works rhythmically and expressively, making constant choices as he composes, Ross removes authorial choice from the art-making process as much as possible, presenting data in a scientifically elegant manner.

One of the most interesting aspects of “Mansions of the Zodiac,” then, is Ross’ use of Xerox technology, which is inherently inelegant. Early photocopiers were of notoriously poor quality, and many artists who made Xerox art in the 1970s and 80s were specifically interested in the conceptual potential of cheap and degraded images. The subversive power of Xerox technology was also explored by scores of underground zine-makers, as seen in the Brooklyn Museum’s five-decade survey show, “Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines,” which ran through March of last year.

Photographs of stars are not the same as the stars themselves. Mass-produced reproductions of those photographs in star atlas books are not the same as the original photographs. And Xeroxed images of those reproductions are different still. Each mediation removes us one step further from what Walter Benjamin in his oft-cited essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” called the “aura” of the original. Ross’ work is a copy of a copy of a copy that treats the entire cosmos as a readymade, reproduced as a faded but otherwise unaltered image, without additional creative interpretation or commentary.

To be clear, I don’t think Ross was using Xerox technology to be provocative or subversive. He used it, probably, because it was the simplest and most straightforward method he could find at that time to reproduce images of the entire night sky on a large scale. Ross was a mathematician before he became an artist, and he has always seemed more comfortable talking about abstract concepts like “the precession of the equinoxes” than cultural commentary, aesthetics or feelings.

Ross’ dry, conceptual approach to art was influenced by people like Sol LeWitt, who, as it happened, made his own Xerox art in 1968 for “Untitled (Xerox Book),” an art book project that included contributions by fellow conceptualists, such as Joseph Kosuth, Douglas Huebler and Lawrence Weiner. The pedestrian connotations of Xerox — its absolute lack of aesthetic pretention — clearly appealed to these conceptualists’ “what you see is what you see” sensibility.

Ross’ Xeroxed cosmos is, on one level, a data visualization project, illustrating the movement of the earth vis-à-vis the stars over thousands of years. The specific details of that data may interest people who care about astronomy and/or astrology. But what interests me are the works’ formal and material properties, which tell their own stories.

There is a subtle humor in the notion of taking the entire cosmos as a readymade art object and attempting to Xerox it. It’s as if Ross is saying, “Oh, you want me to show you everything that exists? Here, let me Xerox it for you.” And, even though Ross has apparently succeeded at this absurd task, his art would have been just as interesting, I think, if he had failed.

The distinctive symmetrical shapes in these pieces are necessitated by the mathematical problem of translating spheres onto two-dimensional surfaces with limited distortion. But again, what excites me is not the data but the shapes themselves, which are nearly as interesting as those in Vladimir Tatlin’s “Monument to the Third International” or Frank Gehry’s crumpled and cantilevered buildings.

The scale of the works, and the way they are installed, have meaning, too. The curator, Nicole Dial-Kay, told me that Ross asked her to hang the works lower than she otherwise would have, because he wanted visitors to experience them in relation to their own bodies, which is important to him. At 190 inches, they are tall enough to make even the tallest humans feel small, much as Richard Serra’s sculptures do. But compared to the actual sky, they are obviously much smaller. When we get close, we can see that their millions of tiny stars are smaller than the grooves on our own fingerprints. So, even as the canvases tower over us, we tower over the stars they contain. We feel smaller, but also bigger.

I’m glad I’m seeing “Mansions of the Zodiac” before “Star Axis.” If “Star Axis” had opened first, I might interpret these pieces, massive as they are, as mere preparatory diagrams — like sketches for a painting or the storyboard to a film. But because their materials are more ephemeral, they have an inherent pathos that “Star Axis” won’t possess. “Star Axis” may feel magical, mesmerizing and sublime, but these feel more personal.

Yes, I am well aware that Ross, like LeWitt before him, doesn’t want to make “personal” art. But sometimes it’s those little moments when the personal pokes through, despite the artist’s best efforts to conceal it, that makes an artwork come alive.

Like the Rothko Chapel or Barnett Newman’s “Stations of the Cross,” “Mansions of the Zodiac” has a palpable solemnity when viewed from afar. But, as we move closer, we see evidence of the human hand everywhere. And with the bold, prismatic colors Ross has chosen for the edges of his forms, we even see evidence of human joy — whether he wants us to or not.

'Mansions of the Zodiac' by Charles Ross brings the cosmos down to a human scale