Printed in 1999, the Speed of Light series marked a departure from Rosenquist’s advertising imagery and instead explored the artist’s ongoing fascination with space and time. Referencing the phenomena of the solar system, these works feature increasingly elaborate compositions. Images overly and interlock to form a chaotic abstract landscape. Rosenquist has likened the imagery to the altered view of the universe that one would get if traveling at the speed of light:
“…what people are looking at is something that has been changed by the speed of light in the same way that ideas shift in my paintings as you look at them. In this case I was melting objects into an abstraction…. The idea was to make a painting that then disintegrates into something else, an image changing form right in front of your eyes so that you don’t know exactly what it is.” — James Rosenquist, Painting Below Zero
