Termesphere Gallery – Spearfish, South Dakota - Atlas Obscura

Termesphere Gallery

This geodesic gallery holds a collection of painted spheres that make traditional canvases look lazy by comparison. 

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Most artists paint on a a flat plane, but in the Termesphere gallery, artist Dick Termes uses hanging spheres as surreal three-dimensional canvasses that look like distorted little worlds all to themselves. 

The spheres, when completed, are known as Termespheres. Each Termesphere is a revolving three-dimensional space/time exploration of an entirely closed universe, meaning that what you see, rotating in front of you, is one complete world or environment. Even the gallery itself is housed in a geodesic dome, with the finished spheres hang from the ceiling, looking like a psychedelic solar system.

Flat, two-dimensional paintings generally rely on two points of perspective to create a sense of depth and perspective, but Termes utilizes six points in his works so that they can capture 360 degrees of imagery.

While most of the Termespheres can be found in the gallery some have been lent out to other collections and one of them most famously can be seen on the cover of an edition of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.     

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August 19, 2014

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