Spectral Field
Houston, TX
September 19—November 8
2025
Photography by Sol Diaz-Peña
Spectral Field is a plasma sculpture installation inspired by the work of Bradberry's collaborator Dr. Christopher M. Johns-Krull, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University: delving into the lifecycle of stars born from collapsing clouds of gas and dust, living through intense thermonuclear processes, and eventually expiring into vast, cold voids of space. The collaboration between Bradberry and Dr. Johns-Krull is part of an ongoing collaboration as one of 15 trios participating in the Simons Foundation’s Science, Society and Culture Division Open Interval program.
Like stars, our understanding of existence often arises from deep, unquantifiable spaces and is shaped by forces both known and unknowable. Throughout history, humans have gazed up to the sky, recording stories, documenting observations, and drawing inspiration from cosmic objects as a means to ask profound questions and find meaning in the unknown. Spectral Field continues this trajectory, celebrating the innocence of our relationship to the stars and the universe while offering a space to investigate the mindset required to imagine the unfathomable.
Opening on the autumnal equinox, this exhibition acts as a foil for Nowruz (the Persian New Year), an ancient 3,000-year-old celebration of rebirth and good fortune that takes place on the spring (vernal) equinox each year. During both equinoxes, day and night are nearly equal in length. For this sister event, both death and birth are explored in each piece within the exhibition. Repeating motifs of spiral motion reference life cycles, and the mathematical truths of nature and the universe. Spirals, like stars, have often symbolically reflected the ongoing process of transformation and enlightenment. In choreography with the cycles of the sun and moon, Spectral Field is a constructed celestial environment rooted in place and time as well as a psychological space for communing with the ineffable.
The installation features seven new works, including Dusk, a walkable spiral labyrinth made out of diffused soft textile sheets and aluminum conduit with ruby red at its core; Dawn, a rare gas illuminated plasma sculpture suspended over a sun-activated reflecting pool; two inverted starbursts, The Start of All Things and The End of All Things, and the series of sky blue lines that mirror the low windows of the room, Reborn, all braiding together an interdisciplinary approach of working with organic and atmospheric materials as collaborators. Other new sculptures expand on Bradberry’s ideas of space, time, renewal, and rebirth. Reservoir: One Hour, One Hundred Years features a repurposed rotary speaker playing ethereal audio of accordion sound played and recorded by Bradberry at the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, a former water reservoir built in 1926 for the City of Houston. The audio highlights the unique 17-second reverberation created by the monumental scale of the subterranean infrastructure. Echo Window, a repurposed light box, sporadically flickers as the bulbs slowly switch on and off. Both works highlight Bradberry’s practice of utilizing found objects to make new experiences that outline the architecture of the gallery and offer different points of perspective on space and time.
Spectral Field offers a space of protection, warding away evil in this age of great peril to the safety and sanctity of humanity in the context of increasingly dehumanizing forces.
