Conjuring the void The art of black holes

How to visualize the invisible. They were, from the start, an aberration: seeds of destruction planted in the laws of physics that could grow gravity so strong it would tear holes in space and time. Physicists tried to rid them from their equations to no avail--black holes are real. And they pose a real conundrum: How can we see something that eats not only light but darkness? It's a question that Gamwell, art curator and historian, tackles in this arrestingly beautiful book. In 2019, she explains, the Event Horizon Telescope produced the first direct image of a black hole. It took a global array of telescopes forming an aperture nearly as wide as the Earth to capture the black hole in silhouette from 55 million light-years away. It's an astounding achievement--but no less powerful are the metaphors that black holes provide in the hands of brilliant artists. "Once scientists discovered that the laws of physics no longer applied within a black hole, abstract artists drawn to irrationality were also drawn to black holes," Gamwell writes. They stood for the darkness of the Holocaust, the erasure of atomic bombs, the bleak atmosphere of the Cold War.Full Stop by British artist John Latham, whose work deals with book burnings, shows what could be a black hole or a period at the end of a sentence--marking the end not only of space, time, and light, but of language, meaning, and discourse. South African artist Kamil Hassim'sEvent Horizon installed prisms in the former prison that held Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid politicians. "The terms 'inescapable' and 'point of no return' can certainly be applied to the Old Fort Prison Complex," the author writes. A photograph of the piece showing refracted light converging on a person shrouded in darkness is haunting, as are so many of the works Gamwell has chosen--from Chiharu Shiota's burnt piano and charred chairs wrapped in a cocoon of black thread to Anish Kapoor's painting in Vantablack, a coating that absorbs 99.96% of visible light. For a topic so inherently mysterious and emotional, Gamwell's prose is stilted and dry, but the art more than makes up for it. A stunning convergence of art and science that plumbs the depths of black holes, both cosmic and cultural. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.