"Study for Messier 17" by Jan Pieter Fokkens

The colorful paintings of Jan Pieter Fokkens transport us to distant worlds beyond our comprehension. Within seemingly infinite networks of lines, dots, and crosses, he decodes the recognizable to create something unfamiliar.

Each two-dimensional work begins with a photo captured by a deep-space telescope. Despite their photographic realism, “these beautiful images of outer space are not real,” says Fokkens. “They are contrived to show us some utopian sci-fi landscape — as though one could stare at them from a field of grass on a nearby planet. What is real is the sense of wonder they emit.” Colorized to convey depth and scale, such images have already been altered to make impossible sights more easily consumable.

With the aid of custom algorithms, Fokkens further manipulates the “fake pixels” of these images, extracting qualities such as pattern, form, and color. He then hand-paints these abstracted qualities as isolated points on canvas. Despite his methodical process, his paintings honor a romantic sense of beauty and capture the sense of longing and wonder one feels when they look out at the stars.

Inspired by early non-representational art, Fokkens treats his abstractions as a means of manipulating reality. Up-close, they might remind us of modernist paintings by the likes of Seurat or Mondrian. There is movement in the still image – moments within the composition that shift in and out of sight, that obscure and reveal the longer you look. Endlessly generating new experiences of perspective, Fokkens’s paintings challenge our perceptions and allow us to peer into other worlds.

Find original Jan Pieter Fokkens paintings on 1stDibs.