OURANOS, ABOVE US ONLY SKY
OURANOS, ABOVE US ONLY SKY unfolds as a meditation on the celestial imagination, the architecture of transit, and the way humans have always looked upward to locate meaning, direction, and wonder.
The work began with historical constellation maps, where myth, geometry, and observation converge. These images became a visual point of departure: not as fixed illustrations to reproduce, but as fragments of a larger cosmological language to be reinterpreted through movement, rhythm, and abstraction.
From there, the project expanded into a dialogue with Grand Central itself. The celestial ceiling, the movement of bodies through the station, and the architectural imagination of the city became part of the composition. The work reflects the experience of looking up while moving forward — the ancient sky mapped directly into the modern path.
The sequence began with analog research, sourcing images from historical star atlases and architectural manifestos that influenced films like Metropolis and Blade Runner. These fragments were printed, hand-colored, and assembled into physical collages before being re-digitized. By layering these historical artifacts into a two-minute loop, the work bridges the gap between the visionary dreams of the past and the collective motion of the modern city.
Inspired by Johann Bayer’s (1572–1625) Uranometria and the original inverted Harold Jacoby’s projection of the sky in Grand Central Station, the buildings represented in this skyline, both unrealized and constructed through fiction and reality such as the works of futurist Italian architect Sant’Elia’s “Città Nuova” (“New City”) designed to symbolize a new age, and The Metropolis of Tomorrow, a 1929 book written and illustrated by Hugh Ferriss. These structures along with glimpses of what could be a Manhattan skyline denote the spirit of the city even more than the underworld quality of walking on the streets of the city.
My aim is to infuse imagination into the surreal elements as a colorful and inspirational component during these intense times we are witnessing in our lives. I am OPTimist…
John Lennon, Imagine — No hell below us, Above us only sky
On Uranometria
Johann Bayer (1572–1625) was a German lawyer and uranographer. His star atlas Uranometria Omnium Asterismorum, first published in 1603 in Augsburg, was the first atlas to cover the entire celestial sphere. It introduced the Bayer designation system for stars and added twelve new constellations mapping the far south of the night sky, unknown to ancient Greece and Rome.
On Harold Jacoby and Grand Central
The celestial ceiling above the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal was created by Columbia astronomy professor Harold Jacoby for the station’s 1913 opening. A month after opening, a commuter noticed a crucial error: the celestial map was backwards. Jacoby’s work had been projected onto the ceiling and inadvertently reversed by the painters.