Artist Colby Sempek on Pocketfuls of Sky:

In Pocketfuls of Sky I’m looking at science as a cultural construction of reality. To paraphrase Thomas Kuhn, science has never brought us universal truths, but instead goes through series of paradigm shifts where new theories/observations are accepted as truth and the current paradigm refutes or redefines our past. The same slippery concept that science can bring us truth is also espoused by photography – a form of science and art that can wear one of many contradicting masks, including that of an objective document – truth. Combining both of these things to make a definitive statement about reality can become metaphysically outlandish but it still seems to maintain its assertion of empirical truth in popular opinion and lay culture.

There are things that I want to believe to be true in contemporary scientific theories and there are realities that I want to construct for myself – thus is born the fictional Project Analemma and the characters that are vehicles in asserting quasi-false realities about astronomy and astrophysics. In a time where many theories still lie at the threshold of absolute truth – string theory, the multiverse and less respected studies like null physics or hyperdimensional physics – I want to put in my two cents and hold to the naïve belief that it is irrefutably real. In this same naiveté, I want this reality to be at the mercy of creation, and not observation. This is part science, part conspiracy theory, part fantasy, but I feel like those are some of the basic tenets of the scientific method and art making.

About the Artist:

Colby Sempek was born and raised in San Jose, California. He began studying photography in high school where he was introduced to analogue black and white printing and the beginnings of digital photography. After graduating high school, he continued to study photography at De Anza College in Cupertino, California.  His two years at De Anza - which included intermediate to advanced photo classes, experimental photography, photo history classes, and independent studies - broadened Colby’s horizons as be began to get acquainted more intimately with the world of photography, photographers and his own art work. By the end of his second year he had started to experiment with constructed spaces and collage as a way to explore the illusory quality of photography. From there, he continued his studies at KCAI in Kansas City, Missouri. Here, his ideas about photography, illusion, and constructed environments matured and progressed. For Colby, the photograph became something that can never be objectively real. Constructed realities within American culture, including theme parks and natural history museums, became arenas of simulacrum where representations became contextualized and represented within the subjectivity of the photograph. Seeking a truth in this subjectivity became a common thread while exploring memories and dreams in digital composite images for his thesis project. After graduating with a BFA from KCAI, Colby continued his photographic pursuits working as an assistant with Tal Wilson, a commercial photographer.  Colby is currently attending UNM working towards an MFA in 2012. He is working on a new project that explores the metaphysical and objective implications of modern and contemporary science through a narrative that works to perceive the imperceptible and expound its abstract concepts.

Image: Blue Iris Nebula

Visit the Colby Sempek Photography website