Notes

Penn’s interest in origins naturally draws him toward observations of objects that are extremely large and distant as well as extremely small and equally distant. Images of the cosmos and of the microscopic and even the quantum realities of atoms and energies are often conflated in his works. Quaoar is a distant object in our solar system situated in the Kuiper belt beyond the orbit of Neptune and is one of thousands of such Kuiper belt objects. Pluto is now one of three Kuiper belt objects to be officially recognised as a dwarf planet. Quaoar, 2009  is a pastel drawing of our best optical image of the object as it drifts slowly around the sun and is accompanied by a small ink drawing, Quaoar (enhanced), 2009 of the same object based on a different imaging system.