In this site-specific installation, Roque is in dialogue with the surroundings of 3rd Ward: an abandoned, graffiti covered, oil refinery; small factories, and bustling Brooklyn traffic. The uniqueness of the industrial park is both glamorized and disguised in Roque’s imagery. Roque asks the viewers to explore their environment and see the celestial. Layering trace images of Titan, Saturn’s Moon, taken by the Huygens probe over wall drawings of cityscapes, Roque connects the tangible with the ephemeral. In Roque’s point of view, contemporary reality is not just made of Capitalism’s vigorous success, but also of a maze of forgotten places—where big trucks cross the roads spreading heavy powered noise and where gangs of teenagers arm themselves with spray cans to mark their territories inadvertently responsible for the rising of the new aesthetic.

Two plastic boom boxes floating in the gallery react to each other’s beeping transmissions. They communicate through a Morse-Code song, a robot language only intelligible to and from their own automatic responses. Their language is based on beep sounds used to control Huygens’ landing on Saturn’s moon on Jan 14th 2005 – a continued call and response dialogue between the feedback babies. The simplicity of Roque’s work and his blurring of boundaries between high and low tech creates uncanny approachability.

There will be an artist talk at the gallery, May 20th at 2 pm.