The paintings featured in “Ekaterina Smirnova: Selected Paintings from the Series 67P” are chosen from the Seattle-based artist’s recent project “67P,” which incorporates painting, sculpture, music and video that immerses audiences in an experience of space exploration and scientific discovery. The project title refers to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the comet where the European Space Agency’s “Rosetta” mission successfully landed a probe for the first time in history.

Highly inspired by astronomy, physics and chemistry, Smirnova was fascinated by the frozen “heavy water” discovered on 67P that contained a different hydrogen isotope than the water found on Earth. Using an electrolytic process, Smirnova generated a similar, deuterium-rich water that she used in her paintings based on the photographs captured by the “Rosetta” mission’s instruments.