two hundred billion trillion

Chinatown Taylor Studios, Los Angeles

February 21 - April 14 2025

two hundred billion trillion is Stephan Pascher’s second exhibition with Chinatown Taylor. The show consists of 19 drawings from an ongoing series of graphite works depicting the sky in various iterations. Technically diverse, each group of drawings employs different methodologies: tracing star charts, copying low quality images from the web or from an old iPhone, repetition and accretion of line, and more classical approaches to drawing.

This celestial body of work comes from a long time gazing at the stars in Far West Texas - contemplating the immensity and incomprehensibility of it all, and at the same time, imagining other worlds, as expansive in nature as possible without regard to specific contexts or situations like much of Pascher’s previous work. The drawings take a very long time to make - one of the earliest nearly 8 months - the result of deep looking, intense focus and contemplation, much like star-gazing itself.

The series marks the time of its origin, the pandemic: a period of withdrawal, insularity, reflection, and a desire for escape. “Where better to escape but deep space?” Pascher ruminates on the abstraction of outer space and its stars, their mystery, and truth. Despite their visibility to the naked eye, and ever greater powers of representation through advanced imaging and computation technologies, stars remain in essence illusory. Yet, they have wielded major cultural significance in nearly every known society, serving as navigational tool, talisman, story and fortune teller. They are the metric that holds it all together.

This junction of the real and unreal is rooted in the cross between scientific knowledge and mythology, taking particular shape in the form of the Zodiac. While the work seems to encourage deep contemplation, it at the same time points to the limitations of science, language, and unreflective belief. Astronomy merged with astrology, the Zodiac provides a convenient framework to ponder, and from which to scribble some lines.

Bringing this limitless, galactic spectacle back to earth, Pascher accounted for the exhibition space, tracking the skylight’s quadrilateral “light shadow” as it moves from morning to evening, and reflecting this information in a series of sun drawings by introducing an element of time, or rather its negation.

“The idea that I could spend the rest of my life drawing the sun appeals to me. The essence of painting has to do with the creation of light through the juxtaposition of color, tone and notably the use of chiaroscuro. Indeed, light can be made to happen in a work of art, but can light itself - or specifically the sun, its source - be drawn? The resulting body of work, at once creating light, both metaphorically and literally, proposes the collapse of optical experience and representation.”

two hundred billion trillion, with graphite on paper as its moyen d’expression, possesses a richness and directness with a near-mechanical application of pencil to page. This approach offers the viewer/stargazer an opportunity to look deeply, to reflect, and to slow down as the world accelerates.

— from press release

Press Release & Check List

Interview with Pierre Senay

Stephan Pascher in Discussion with Henry Taylor