Rauschenberg worked on the Borealis series from 1988 to 1992. The five brass panels of the present work are covered by a highly heterogeneous cosmos of motifs: The artist screen-printed photographs taken on his travels—a tree trunk, two chairs, a towel, a newspaper, a monkey, and a large clock tower—onto the shimmering surface of the panels in an arch-like arrangement. The only three-dimensional object, a sousaphone, picks up on the materiality of the medium. Rauschenberg reflects on the representability of things and forms of depiction and, at the same time, with Orrery (= a mechanical model of the solar system), presents a projection of the world created by technology. This polyptych was the key work in a comprehensive solo exhibition dedicated to Rauschenberg at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, at the opening of which the artist himself was present.