NROL-65 Spy Satellite Launch
Artist
Kevin Cooley
(American, born 1975)
Date2013
MediumInkjet print
DimensionsAssembled: 74 × 12 1/2 × 1 1/2 inches (187.96 × 31.75 × 3.81 cm)
Credit LineGift of the Hall Family Foundation
Object number2014.31.8.1-4
Signednone
InscribedArtist's white label on frame backing board, verso, lower right corner, black type: "KEVIN COOLEY / NROL-65 Spy Satellite Launch / four 12x18" archival pigment prints / edition 2 of 4. / 2013"
Markingsnone
Edition/State/Proofed. 2/4
On View
Not on viewCollections
DescriptionA quadriptych of billowy smoke clouds set against blue sky.Exhibition History
Surveillance.
The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO. September 16, 2016 – January
29, 2017, no cat.
Kevin Cooley’s images of fluffy white clouds in the clear blue sky are not as innocent as they may first appear. These are, in fact, not clouds but the vapor trail of a three-booster rocket sending the heaviest satellite in the US government’s inventory into orbit. Although this satellite has a secret purpose, it is capable of taking pictures detailed enough to decipher the make and model of a car hundreds of miles below. Cooley’s work is an attempt to understand how everything has the potential to be simultaneously beautiful and threatening.
With the Hall Family Foundation, Kansas City, MO by
2014;
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2014.
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2014.
Copyright© Kevin Cooley
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