SKY HIGH, 15 - 17 December 2006, Bastard, Bjerregaardsgate 51. 0174 Oslo

Den astronomiske kunstner vil alltid ligge langt forut for oppdageren. Han kan avbilde scener som intet menneskelig øye noen gang vil skue, fordi det vil være for farlig, eller ligge for fjernt i tid og rom. Bare gjennom fantasiens øyne kan vi utforske stjerneformasjonene, en supernovas eksplosjon, den kulerlagerglatte overflaten på en neutron-stjerne eller utstikten over vår egen galakse.

Arthur C. Clarke

The astronomical artist will always be far ahead of the explorer. He can illustrate scenes that no human eye will ever see, because it will be too dangerous or lie too distant in time and space. Only through the eyes of fantasy are we able to explore star formations, an explosion of a supernova, the ball bearing surface of a neutron star or the view of our own galaxy.

Arthur C. Clarke (freely translated from Norwegian)
The artist run space Bastard was initated by Anders Smedbye and Marius Engh in 2005. The two room gallery space used to be the home of the Sky Pizzeria and Grill. The gallery space was transformed back to its original state and reopened with inspiration of space exploration under the name ”Sky High”. 
The conversion started with some archelogical work. When the gallery walls were removed, we discover the original tile wall of the pizza bar intact behind the surface. On the floor there were marks of where the old pizza counter used to be. The white gallery walls were used to build a new new counter in the exact  same place where it used to be. Two ovens and a fridge were found in the backyard of the gallery space. Four more ovens were found on the recirculation site of a local appliance store.
The gallerist Anders Smedby getting help in screwing in a screw.
Professional Italian pizza baker Christiano Franchi helped us learn the works of running a pizza bar.

Space Travel

What is far away comes closer and what is far too close becomes more distant. The simplest form of experiment is an eye test. The viewer is concentrating on the object at hand – a 2 dimensional surface with letters and numbers that is going tell him/her if there is a problem with the vision.  People started to question the fact if this was a real pizza bar. In a short time we had regular customers and people ordering take away.

´like watching the earth disappear as you are moving into space”