Life on Mars, the 55th Carnegie International exhibition, features a group of forty artists from seventeen countries who find hope in questioning the absurdity of our lives. As Douglas Fogle, curator of the show at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, writes, “they transport us aesthetically to other worlds with the hope that each of us will learn to start loving” alien things and beings in the world around us.

© Rudolf Stingel, Untitled, 2008, oil and enamel on canvas, Courtesy of the artist and Paul Cooper Gallery, New York. All rights reserved.

This optimistic appeal harkens back to the 19th-century premise of the Carnegie International: to “spread good will among nations through the international language of art.” However, in this 21st-century mix of modern media, each piece requires an immersion course in a new language to be able to welcome the alien on intelligible terms.

Alienation and hope interrelate through Italian Rudolf Stingel’s scintillating use of a single color in his untitled 2008 work of oil and enamel on canvas. Stingel’s painting is a sheer glory of gold that brings to mind the use of that mineral pigment to signify the transcendent in religious art of past centuries and civilizations. The canvas is painted in such a way as to both delight and fool the eye. Embedded deep in the color is the photographic replication of a carpet-like pattern, pushing back into space. The linear perspective in the pattern draws the viewer into an already alluring space and raises expectations as to where this all might be heading.

Unexpectedly, this artist’s creative appropriation of an everyday design awakens a desire to transcend the mundane. Like the hopeful but tentative connection of a first encounter with a friendly stranger, Stingel’s piece raises excitement without demanding emotional investment. In this, the first piece that a visitor encounters upon entering the show, the combination of an everyday, mechanically created pattern with a gorgeous color sets the stage for an enthusiastic, if somewhat superficial welcome.

© Cao Fei, My Future is Not a Dream, 2006, digital c-print, Courtesy of the artist and Lombard-Freid Projects, New York. All rights reserved.

An engaging story about the relationship between human aspiration and things mechanical is told by My Future is not a Dream, the beautiful film by Chinese artist Cao Fei. The film shows the mechanical “ballet” of a Chinese manufacturing plant’s assembly line, then quickly turns to involve the viewer in the lives of the factory’s workers. Without words, the film’s visual reporting raises the question “What is a fitting relationship between humans and machines?” It does this through jarring and shocking juxtapositions in images of human workers moving in step and with the speed and precision of the machines that surround and engage them.

The workers appear to be in harmony with an environment that is alien and hostile. The filmmaker periodically produces an “alienation-effect” by introducing two figures into the scenes. Throughout the piece, the figures of an old man and a young woman personify the problem of what it means to move freely in a mechanized setting. Their alienation from an alien environment reminds the viewer in a somewhat nostalgic way of what it feels like to be human.

© Richard Hughes, The Legendary Chock, 2007, cast silicone rubber, stitched canvas, acrylic paint, cast concrete, and cast polyurethane, Collection of Jill and Peter Kraus, New York. All rights reserved.

London artist Richard Hughes also picks up on connections between man and machine-made objects in The Legendary Chock. In this wistful installation, two shoes at the end of a seesaw bring to mind the mundane joys of childhood, while peeling paint on the walls produces the image of a rainbow. The discovery that the objects in the installation, which appear to be machine-made, are actually made by the artist’s hand, introduces the redemptive possibility that a personal touch has guided the everyday. Hughes’ piece stands out for its unassuming quality. Through this, it invites the recognition that communication and connection can take place through common things. In the rush of modern relations, where an assault on the senses is expected, it is refreshing to find an artist working through the unexpected power of stillness and reserve.

© Noguchi Rika, The Sun, 2005-2006, chromogenic print, Courtesy of the artist and D'Amelio Terras, New York. All rights reserved.

Noguchi Rika’s photographs, which are displayed in a darkened room, show how technology can bring nature close, while at the same time, making it unreal. In a series of photographs called The Sun, the artist explores her experiences with a most familiar feature of our world through a primitive pinhole camera. Ironically, by looking unswervingly into the sun, our view of it becomes less direct. Auras of recorded light replace a well-known celestial body with mystery. Here we learn to love the alien by reconsidering what is familiar and questioning the straightforward assessment of something well known.

Walking into dark rooms was a surprisingly significant part of this show and it was always a bit creepy. Certainly, the black backgrounds suited the projection of films and the display of photographs, but the darkness of the spaces was suggestive of vast, cold and blank interplanetary distances. It seemed it might be hard to sustain life (let alone love) through these expanses.

© Ranjani Shettar, Just a bit more, 2006, hand-molded beeswax, pigments, and thread dyed in tea, Courtesy of the artist and Talwar Gallery, New York/New Delhi, Photo: Tom Little. All rights reserved.

In an artist’s lecture, Ranjani Shettar from India commented on her piece Just a bit more, a room of strung beads of beeswax flowing in waves, saying “…when I started, I had water in my mind, but it was not exactly water. I was trying to go beyond all physical forms so I didn’t want to have anything that meant anything physical. I am sure that I cannot do anything out of this world—it’s not possible—you always have reference to something you already know…”

This was a clue for me about the kind of love these pieces ask that we give the alien. It requires knowing something tangible of the alien, not simply considering it in abstraction. So much of the art in this show seems to take up mundane objects and return them to us through the work of art, asking, “Can you receive what you have mistaken as common as a gift?” As Shettar put it, the hope of going beyond is undeniably mixed with the reality of what is known. This will be part of the gift of loving the alien or, at least, welcoming it. Overall, the show was a rich gift to me, communicating a purpose to things I would easily overlook. I want to look again.

James Schaefer is a student at Westminster Theological Seminary. Life on Mars runs through January 11, 2009 at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.