Perfect Geometry
The circle and square are perfect geometry. One inscribed by the other forms a unique relationship that not only informs art and culture, but exists abundantly in nature. Throughout art history the circle is meant to represent the divine and the square mankind. Combined they represent the reconciliation of the heavenly and infinite with the earthly and man made.
In this exhibition, six square paintings surround an installation sculpture made up of five cylinders that hang suspended from the ceiling. Of the six paintings on 5’ x 5′ wood panels, three portray a cross-section of a fallen tree and three portray a human iris’ characteristically blues. These orb images like the mandala metaphor the earth and planets, a complete circle and cycle. A view of the universe from the human perspective.
The cross-section paintings portray three of the thousands of trees that fell during a devastating windstorm in Vancouver. They visualize the rings of each tree, the marks of it’s age and the passage of time. Their combination of materials and subject form a “double entendre”, tree on tree, wood on wood. One unable to exist without the other.
The three Iris (eye) paintings are a “family portrait”, each with unique characteristics defined by age and genetics. They are paintings that in an infinite cycle look back at you as you look at them. It is an endless gaze of limitless eye contact. A gesture that is sometimes delivered or received as confrontational and sometimes inviting.
Salvage is an installation sculpture that mimics and manufactures trees by using shredded paper catalogues from a previous exhibition. Five, nine foot, clear vinyl, cylindrical tubes stuffed with this recycled paper, hang from the ceiling and are positioned to represent a small forest of trees, composed with just enough space to walk through and experience. It is a man made microcosm of nature paradoxically made from its own resources.
The forest is an environment that perfectly defines and describes the endless pattern of the cycle of life. It’s flora and fauna display countless variations that form to create natural mandalas. In Perfect Geometry, circles and squares combine to make paintings that orbit the sculpture Salvage, and symbolize the perfect symmetry found in nature. Salvage is the axis fabricated to suggest nature’s cyclical pattern of life and death, destruction and renewal. These qualities mirror the complexities of the “creative process”, as success and failure coexist despite uncertain results. Art, nature and creativity exist and relate in endless combinations each linked in unique relationships. Each combination is a compass that directs and redirects our efforts to sustain and control the natural world and ultimately define our place in it.
Laurie Papou, 2015
