Artstrology: Pisces 2021, Prism

When I think of Pisces, I imagine a bucket of clear water: when you add in different pigments, the water changes color. Typically Pisces are sensitive to the point that they are very easily influenced by those around them. One could also see them as sponge-like, absorbing all the energies around them without noticing, which explains their empathy and fluctuating moods. As a result, sleeping and dreaming are necessary for them to recharge and reset.

Because of their adaptability, Pisces is the best of all the signs when it comes to being Zen and going with the flow. The flipside is they tend to escape from reality, especially when they feel overwhelmed by their surroundings. For Pisces artists, then, art is an escape to other, possibly spiritual, realms.

For example, Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, who is drawn to Dadaism and Surrealism, believes that photography can record intangible, elemental forces. For his Theaters (1978– ) series, he visited different cinemas and kept his camera shutter open for the entire duration of the movie in an attempt to capture a whole movie in a single frame. The resulting images portray shining screens in empty cinemas, eliciting a futuristic, almost ghostly impression of the spaces. For his recent Polaroid series, Opticks (2018– ), Sugimoto projects light through a prism onto a mirror in his studio and photographs the vivid colors produced. His thoughts on the creative process interestingly resonate with my analogy of Pisces being a bucket of colored water: “I am engulfed in color. Particularly when the colors fade and fuse into darkness, the gradation seems to melt away into pure mystery.”

This fascination with colors and the relationship between our consciousness and physical reality can also be observed in Anish Kapoor’s sculptures and multimedia installations. Descent into Limbo (1992) comprises an eight-foot-deep hole painted with a black pigment. While the dizzying void is real, Kapoor’s choice of pigment also creates the optical illusion of a flat, dark circle on the ground when viewed from a distance. Equally mesmerizing, his large-scale, stainless-steel public sculpture Sky Mirror (2006), in Nottingham, captures a piece of the sky on the ground, challenging viewers’ perception of the physical surroundings. Kapoor invites viewers to experience his works freely, without imposing his own interpretations of the work, believing that there is more to be explored outside of the artist’s own consciousness.

Pisces season in 2021 could be unusually spiritual and creative with a number of stars in Aquarius, combining the power of innovation with the imaginative flow of Pisces. Being mindful of our emotions will allow us to tap into our emotional intelligence and survive the mood swings this month.