Strange Geometries

QCA Whitebox Gallery, Gold Coast

22 February to 9 March 2013

Superficially, art and geometry may appear at opposite ends of the scale - the intuition and subjectivity in art an uncomfortable companion of the formulaic analysis and linear precision of geometry. Yet strange geometries have travelled with art since time immemorial. Mathematics has informed the structure, the shifts and the major developments in art from ancient Greece, through the Renaissance, into the discoveries that informed cubism and modernity. Proportion and perspective, the legendary golden ratio and its application to buildings, sculpture and all art forms, is related to a perceived intrinsic appeal to the human eye and sensibility.

More recently, chaos theory – a science of the everyday that is applied to economics and art, nature and traffic, and observes the irregular regularities in both the organic and inorganic world – has increased interdisciplinary sharing and expanded the conceptual understanding of the way in which the world may operate.

“The new geometry mirrors a universe that is rough, not rounded, scabrous, not smooth. It is a geometry of the pitted, pocked, and broken up, the twisted, tangled and intertwined. The understanding of nature’s complexity awaited a suspicion that the complexity was not just random, not just accident… Mandlebrot’s work made a claim about the world, and the claim was that such odd shapes carry meaning. The pits and tangles are more than blemishes distorting the classic shapes of Euclidian geometry. They are often the keys to the essence of a thing.”[i]

Mandlebrot’s work explored dimensionality to better define the irregular shapes more likely to be found in nature (rather than geometry’s traditionally straight lines). He developed fractional dimension to measure qualities that were otherwise hard to define – the degree of irregularity in an object (like a coastline or other natural form.) The word fractal was coined to describe this new way of seeing infinity.[ii]

In Daniel Della-Bosca’s approach, fractal forms have been central, inspirational and formative. Originally, classical sculptural training and structure informed his direction. “The sculptural tradition uses form and space, yet an equation that has been generated elsewhere also offers tools Fractals are just another set of tools: yet they offer me an opportunity to explore uncharted waters- I find myself in a place that no-one else has been.”[iii]

Grouping these art works in different media – from ceramics to sculpture to animation - under the title Strange Geometries is to acknowledge both the universal appeal of geometric shapes and the new paradigms that draw connections between art and nature, the industrial and the organic, the personal and the universal, the spiritual and the structural.

A still from Della-Bosca’s animation, “Untouched”, is a ‘fly-through’ fractal waterscape. Della-Bosca uses minimal amounts of information, computerizing them recursively to generate his forms. An infinitesimally small seed of information continues to produce, and the artistry is in the choice of where to stop and start. In his two dimensional prints, one of clouds generated through software, and the other a visual expression of the Julia Sets, we are directed to perceive the virtual world within the natural, just as fractals allow mathematicians to analyse the irregular regularities visible in nature. The title refers to the ‘untouchable’ nature of this type of data in a physical sense, while our understanding of these concepts resonates materially, imaginatively, and cerebrally. The qualities of sheer beauty generated in these forms continue to drive him.

Louise Harvey’s animation may be read as a portrait of modernity, a digital dreamscape, an animated fractal realm, with repetition in magnification that parallels the explosion of the information highway. In Continuous Scrolling: Enabled, 2012, five minutes of footage becomes a summation, a tangible effort to frame the information age. The highlighting, from time to time, of the last four letters of enabled, suggests a sinister edge. Scrolling images are accompanied by a numeric calculation and speak to the collapse of the distinction between art and science, the real and the virtual. Blackness is pervasive – with shades of grey scale – and images ripple past. As soon as you grasp at a thought to match the image, it moves on, like a meditation that takes as its ruminant the pace and priorities of data.

Harvey suggested, “Intensely complicated geometrical forms can be expressed in an infinite number of ways, and seemingly, as if by magic, can be generated via mathematical computations rather than by hand.”[iv]

Donna Marcus has cast porcelain dodecahedral structures in ‘new tech’ ceramics that invoke the sense of artistry at the vanguard of science. The overlap between the domestic and industrial aesthetic is beautifully dovetailed in Slip. This series utilizes nostalgia – the lemon squeezer shape rendered in retro colours - to take us to the finishes and colours of a previous age. However, the repetition, the repeated motif, speaks equally to the modernity of the mechanical age and its transformative power to absorb and extend humanity.

Tyler Jackson’s fabricated timber sculpture represents the star tetrahedron (from sacred geometry). This becomes is a physical representation of opposites (in nature, humanity, the dualistic understanding of the world) in perfect balance. He has adapted the form with curved intersecting sides to infer a feminine balance to the traditionally straight-sided platonic triangle, and creates a form that expresses lightness and tightness – in its concept, materials and form.

Alyson Baker has found real life parallels in her realization of a large knitted icosahedron, the most complex of the Platonic solid forms. The association of knitting with women of our grandmother’s generation, its craft and tradition, is at odds with the geometric form she creates. Yet this dichotomy reflects Baker’s struggle to develop the skills to produce it (five knitting needles purpose-made from dowel, and a technique that has built muscle), alongside the inherent uncertainties in her treatment for a life-threatening disease. The knitted rope medium results in a poignantly drooping and inexact rendition of the mathematical sureties of Platonic triangles.

Suzette Macgregor has created a stellated dodecahedron from laser cut paper. Light (that may be shined through) and lightness (of materials) is an inherent part of this work, at odds with its surprising strength of form. The lasercut motifs – the lotus leaf, spirals, six-pointed stars and strings of dots fill each triangular side. The qualities of sacred geometry, old knowledge and the holistic nature of the Eastern spiritual traditions aid the delicate poise and balance of this geometric form with a meaningful aesthetic.

Strange Geometries applies science to form and form to science, and recognizes the essential interconnectedness between nature, humanity and meaning. Simple shapes are made complex and complex simple – echoing in their essence and familiarity the response in all of us.

17 February 2013

Louise Martin-Chew

[i] James Gleick, Chaos, Cardinal, 1990: p.94.

[ii] Gleick, Chaos, 1990: p.98.

[iii] Daniel Della-Bosca, telephone conversation with the author, 13 February 2013.

[iv] Louise Harvey, Artist Statement, Strange Geometries, 2013.