DARIO ROBLETO
I Won’t Let You Say Goodbye This Time, consists of a series of seven photographs of plants budding out of cotton-filled cups, each cup bearing the name of the series and a person’s name. This work appears to be a sentimental monument, but it took a reading of the gallery notes to piece the story together.
It turns turns out that the seeds were part of cargo that was launchedinto space in 1984 and which was supposed to be retrieved by the 1986 Challenger mission That Challenger mission exploded disastrously on takeoff, and rather than be picked up, the cargo was left floating in space for an additional four years before arrangements could be made to retrieve it. The seeds themselves had been sent into space as part of a high-school science project. Once retrieved, Robleto managed to obtain the seeds and fragments of the Challenger’s shields for use in his work.
Robleto used ceramics which incorporated dust from the heat-shields to construct styrofoam-looking cups (in keeping with the seeds’ original class-science-project motif), and inscribed the name of a deceased Challenger astronaut on each of the cups. He then planted a seed in each of the cups and photographed the new plant just as leaves were beginning to sprout In a very real way these planted sculptures brought life to the lost Challenger, and Robleto eternalizedthat life in his photographs. The pictures in this series construe a very touching work, not only as a memorial to the deceased astronauts, but as a scientific tribute to the great goals of their mission.
text via Dan Strum
