Derek Eller Gallery is pleased to present Deep Field, a solo exhibition by Alyson Shotz featuring new work using plated steel, glass, paper, and wood. Shotz is known for experiential, large-scale sculptures inspired by natural and scientific phenomena that subvert their physicality in order to explore the phenomenological experience of space, gravity, and light.
The show’s title, Deep Field, references the epic composite Hubble Deep Field photograph. Over a period of 10 days in 1995, the Telescope recorded this seemingly black and empty patch of sky, a size the equivalent of holding a pinhead at arm’s length. The exposures revealed thousands of hitherto unknown galaxies, providing what NASA has termed a “Core Sample of the Universe.” This notion of looking longer, slowing down to contemplate and thereby seeing more, is an apt metaphor for Shotz’s work. What seems solid and impenetrable when viewed in what Emily Dickinson called “a certain slant of light”, can change in an instant when the planet rotates and the angle of the sun shifts.
The exhibition’s titular work, Deep Field #3, spanning 16 feet, is comprised of thousands of iridescent steel discs reminiscent of planets, moons, or suns or even molecules, that shift in color from celestial blue to deep green to magenta depending upon light and vantage point. Depth perception is also continuously in flux, as is the illusion of weightlessness. It’s akin to a painting – it hangs on the wall, yet it is undeniably three-dimensional, a screen of endless pixelations, the cosmic background radiating afterglow from the Big Bang.
The imagery of the circle resonates throughout the exhibition. It takes the form of telescopic lenses in a series of sculptures called Star-Takers. These works contain highly reflective layered materials – surveillance glass, polished stainless steel, and anodized aluminum – which are stacked in multiple planes and enclosed in wood paneled frames. The pieces look both futuristic: a Kubrick-like eye, and at the same time, historical – like a medieval telescope from the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur, India. The name itself, Star-Taker, is a translation from the Persian for astrolabe – an ancient astronomical tool for charting the stars and the planets.
The circle also forms the basis of a series of target-like blue cyanotypes wherein multiple exposures echo out from a bright center like imprints recording the variable radiance of the sun. Stencils made from elements of Shotz’s metal sculptures inform sprayed, layered translucent shapes on paper.
This notion of looking into the “deep field of time,” both future and distant past, encapsulates Shotz’s practice. In the current moment, when artistic expression and scientific inquiry are imperiled, when the very construction of a shared reality has come under attack, Shotz reaffirms her commitment to the inherent value of science, and the humanistic power of art, in search of a deeper perspective on time.
Alyson Shotz (b.1964) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Recent noteworthy public projects include: Vínculo, 2025, a monumental permanent work curated by the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Embassy, Mexico City; Scattering Screen, 2025, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK; A World Made of Time, 2024, New York Botanical Garden; Entanglement, 2022, Billie Tisch Center for Integrated Sciences, Skidmore College; and The Robes of Justitia, 2022, The Fred D. Thompson Federal Building and US Courthouse, Nashville, TN for which she received the GSA Honor Award: Highest Achievement in Art. Solo museum exhibitions include: Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte, NC, Coalescence, 2024; Taubman Art Museum, Roanoke, VA, Experiment in Gravity, 2023; Grace Farms Foundation, New Canaan, CT, 2021; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, Un/Folding, 2019; and Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN, 2019. Shotz’s work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln MA, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, among many others. This will be her tenth solo exhibition with the Gallery.