11 Surreal Works Of Art Inspired By Space

Space Shopping Inspired by a shared love of space travel, Brian McCutcheon and his 4-year-old son made space-age paraphernalia. Here, they try out some spacesuits. Brian McCutcheon

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Space Odyssey 2.0, a collaborative art installation opening this month in Belgium at art house Z33, asks some big questions about art and outer space: What is the role of science in art? How has the DIY movement changed our view of space travel? What if somebody went to the moon with a bunch of geese?

It's not the first time, of course, that space has inspired art. (The first sci-fi movie, A Trip To The Moon, came out in 1902, a long time before the actual Space Odyssey.) But space has assumed renewed urgency as a source of artistic inquiry in recent years, with the increasing privatization and popularization of space travel. We're seeing artists who make home-brew satellites: What else can artists do with science?

The international group of artists contributing to the project have different styles--some work in the abstract, others are inspired by sci-fi--but everything is captivating and more than a little weird. Brian McCutcheon sends astronauts shopping; Frederik De Wilde develops surreal images from real math; and Agnes Meyer-Brandis re-tells a 17th-century story about a man going to the moon, with geese in tow.

Stanley Kubrick would be proud.

[Z33]