Space. Endless expanses… that’s how it was when the superpowers USA and USSR, with their space pilots Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong, sought to conquer space with all their might in the 1960s—as rivals yet united in the cause. And somehow, they actually succeeded. This era, romanticized and which can be described as a star hunt, reached its climax on July 21, 1969. Hardly any event has been as widely recognized in theWestern world as the first manned moon landing. Anyone who watched it on television back then–and that was everyone with access to a television–still remembers exactly more than 45 years later where they spent that day and with whom they 'experienced' it. No other positive event has been so etched into people's memories across borders. Even disasters like Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, or the deaths of globally acknowledged legends like the King of Pop Michael Jackson or Pope John Paul II, lack this 'memory anchor' aimed at one point. The only comparable event is September 11, 2001, because here, too, everyone who saw the second plane fly into the World Trade Center knows exactly where they were at the time the unthinkable happened. Even 30, even 50 years later, they will still know. The exclusive, first-time experience and the live experience of an existentially significant event must come together to have such an impact on humanity. The events taking place far away are linked to one's own life on site; they become forever one. That is simply what happened in July 1969 and, unfortunately, also in September 2001.

When it comes to the conquest of space, everything is different today. We can hardly remember all the names of those that were launched into space onto the International Space Station (ISS) last year and, of course, landed back on Earth (thank goodness) unscathed, just like on a scheduled flight. Space programs seem to have become less and less government-run over the years; many independently operating companies like Boeing, Orbital Science, Space X, and United Launch Alliance are not only pushing into the space business, but are already dominating it, which means that space seems to have been definitively conquered these days by capitalism rather than by us, the human beings. Shareholder profit (rather than the repeatedly emphasized curiosity of company bosses) is secretly the priority, meaning that the conquest of the outer space is no longer a mass-interest phenomenon, but has become an upper-class entertainment program that barely makes it into then news and if at all–during launch and landing. Bold statements from corporate leaders like “We want to build rockets in the future like in amass factory, like on an assembly line,” take the breath away from the mysterious, dark infinity, and thus a piece of its aura. Space has become as normal as it is boring. The final frontier seems to have been crossed. Unfortunately.

From today’s perspective, it is hard to understand Markus Döhne’s fascination with space and thus his drive to engage with such commonplace things. Anyone who engages artistically with space these days has to provide a reason for doing so. The artist, of course, knows this too and offers an answer: his rocket paintings.

The basis of this group of approximately thirty works is—as is so often the case with the artist—historical imagery, this time from the pioneering days of space travel. Markus Döhne processes and reworks (without manipulating) the photographs he uncovered in archives in such a way that the 'fascination of space' can be recreated for us in an ambivalent way. With his works, which are highly modern yet also traditional and dignified (in the best sense!), he takes us back to the beginning of space travel. He allows us to participate once again in the breathtaking 'race to the moon'. The many contrasts in the works are remarkable and entirely intentional on the part of the artist.

Thus, in terms of content, the Rockets as Döhne calls them, on the one hand, convey the youthful joy with which one immediately encounters the first rocket panels imagining conquering space with the artist and evoke the space enthusiasm of days gone bye. On the other hand, however, we are simultaneously overcome by the uneasy feeling of the insane arms race between the East and the West of that time, which today is all too apparent in retrospect. Rockets are still rockets. Their disguise has been torn off their faces.

A further inherent contrast in the works is the fact that the images used were all published in so-called mass media of the 1950s and 1960s (books, magazines, daily newspapers) and only through the artist’s treatment in the 21st century have they become valuable unique pieces, oscillating in technique between panel painting, relief and printmaking. It is only through him that the rockets seem to float side by side in absolute tranquility in front of the wall, and for the first time ever one becomes aware of the quiet grandeur of these loud monsters. They shimmer, puffing themselves up like peacocks with plenty of steam, and yet they also appear elegant and reserved. When you enter the room, they suddenly appear before you and you are immediately convinced that you have got hold of them, but at the very moment their contours dissolve before you again, eluding final verification. It's fitting that the rocket panels, like their inferior originals, generally have an inherent element of transience. The silver used by the artist to print on by hand, makes them gradually turn ‘yellow’ through the oxidation process—similar to photos in newspapers. Moreover, the grid pattern of traditional newspaper prints finds its equivalent in the dots of serigraphy. And it is this technique—alongside the subject matter—that Markus Döhne uses quite deliberately to take us back on the path of art history to the era of space travel awakening. Screen printing—probably invented in Japan at the end of the 19th century—reached its peak in the visual arts after the Second World War in what is known as PopArt. Andy Warhol, for example, used it to stylize Marilyn Monroe and many other famous people into icons, especially in the 1960s. In doing so, he accepted and pointed out in these works—with a thoroughly media-critical approach—that the viewer, who is only shown and/or only perceives the variable surfaces of these face masks, learns nothing, absolutely nothing, about the person behind them. Markus Döhne also presents us with iconic portraits of a wide variety of East/West missiles, which, however, do not reveal what was really behind them.

Döhne now uses screen printing combined with old-masterly perfection and the key characteristics of medieval sacred images, such as the wood support, the precious metal grounds and the balanced proportions of his panels to create modern, unique works in the 21st century that not only revive the past but also make it tangible and, at the same time, pose questions about the future that concern humanity. Back in the 1950s, every rocket launch was unique; in our modern memory, however, everything merges into a single, major space launch, which, strangely enough—one wonders how this could have happened, given that so many witnesses witnessed it all—coincides with the famous Apollo 11 flight to the moon. Such an event simply overshadows everything that came before it. As mentioned above, Markus Döhne once again elevates every rocket to the status of an icon. At the same time, however, he also shows us the limits of memory, which continually deceives us — ‘limits of memory’ in particular because everything seemed to be so well documented and recorded for eternity.

All the artists who explored the rocket/space theme at the time, such as Richard Hamilton, Adolf Luther, Otto Piene, Robert Rauschenberg, and Gerhard Richter, did so because they saw themselves directly involved and wanted to respond to this highly topical phenomenon for various intentions. An immediate reaction is not uncommon; even Max Beckmann at once offered an artistic response to the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Markus Döhne, however, addresses precisely the time that passed between the events and his rocket paintings by looking back—stylistically, thematically, art-historically, but also, and this is crucial: socially—to question and examine the memory of both the masses and the individual.

The work Rain illustrates this very vividly. He used one of the rare photos that probably captured the first public viewing in human history. In the center of New York, more precisely in Times Square in Manhattan, the first manned flight of an American astronaut into space was broadcast live on May 5, 1961. Very few people know that this took place in pouring rain. Interestingly, Markus Döhne decided to cut out most of the crowd below, thus putting the focus back on the event itself. But was the event the live broadcast on the giant screen or the tiny Mercury-Redstone 3 that carried the pilot into space? Both were technical masterpieces, but with the painful flaw that the Soviet Union beat the USA to the latter by three weeks.

The memory of the event seems to slide like rain off the mirror-smooth purple-black surface of the image, and even we, despite the seemingly incorruptible photograph, have long since lost it. Who was Alan Shepard, since in the general consciousness there is really only one Yuri Gagarin and one Neil Armstrong? It seems to be confirmed: the first counts, no one else. And after the overwhelming media reports and the convincing live broadcasts, we really have no choice but to believe that these two were the first to venture into areas no human had ever seen before...