Mike and Doug Starn: under the sky

“My battery is low and it’s getting dark.
In this time of brutality, I need a moment of respite to appreciate beauty in nature.
Beauty can bring joy and inspire better things from ourselves.

But it can be hard to fully accept that, not to feel guilty.
Starting with beauty and ending up somewhere else,
looking at the sky made me think about horrors.” - Mike and Doug Starn

Mike and Doug Starn’s under the sky explore the sky as both a visual and philosophical space: beautiful, omnipresent, and in stark contrast to the brutality and oppression unfolding beneath it. The sky becomes a paradox: eternal yet ever-changing, familiar yet capable of inspiring fresh awareness. It offers not just solace, but also confrontation, prompting viewers to acknowledge both the horrors and hopes of our shared human condition. 

By layering stained paper, wax, and rough textures, the artists embrace imperfection not as flaw, but as messiness of life and truth. The materials brought together mirror the struggles and resolutions of being human. What results is not an idealized escape, but a reflection of life in all its rough-edged honesty.

Mike and Doug Starn, American artists, identical twins, born 1961. First having received international attention at the 1987 Whitney Biennial, for more than 20 years the Starns were primarily known for working conceptually with photography, and are concerned largely with chaos, interconnection and interdependence. Over the past two and half decades, they have continued to defy categorization, effectively combining traditionally separate disciplines such as photography, sculpture and architecture. 

Their art has been the object of numerous solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide. The Starns have received many honors including two National Endowment for the Arts Grants in 1987 and 1995; The International Center for Photography’s Infinity Award for Fine Art Photography in 1992; and, artists in residency at NASA in the mid-nineties. They have received critical acclaim in The New York Times, Dagens Nyheter, Corriere della Sera, Le Figaro, The Times (London), Art in America, and Artforum amongst many other notable media. Major artworks by the Starns are represented in public and private collections including: The Museum of Modern Art (NYC); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, (NYC); The Jewish Museum, (NYC); The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC); Moderna Museet (Stockholm); The National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne); Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC); Yokohama Museum of Art (Japan); La Bibliotèque Nationale (Paris); La Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, amongst many others.