The art in question can, perhaps, best be defined as the building up of significant patterns from the ever-changing relations, rhythms and proportions of abstract forms, each one of which, having its own causality, is tantamount to a law unto itself. – Max Bill*Tectonic forms unfold across Achille Perilli's canvases like fugitive origami; coloured shapes playfully configured in futuristic dreams of mechanical flight. In a paper given at the 1999 conference Mathematics and Culture at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, the artist explains his theory of 'geometric irrationality':
[it] originated from the thought that it is possible to think of a geometric form that is no longer determined by the laws of calculus or optics, but by the slight slipping and sliding that memory produces on visual perception data … The shape turns into a field of rapid movements, furious fights and incredible deformations that define brand new, complex structures regulated by "other" laws ... From the relationship between two geometric modules – at times in conflict, at times slightly different – a sequence is born that tends to shift in space until it starts growing from painting to painting.*I imagine that to see his works hung in sequence would indeed create wonderful illusions of movement, the modules shifting, dancing from frame to frame. My own tendency to work in series relates perhaps to my background in animation; to my interest in the individual units of a film sequence and the spaces between them. This A2 collage series, from my first photo experiments with the pyramids, seems to have evolved, crystal-like, of its own accord. I am not sure what to make of the sharp-edged-ness, the violence of the glass shapes, but I like the impossibility of the nets, and am enjoying the process of piecing together each amalgamated form – the 'limitless possibility of variation', to paraphrase Justin Hibbs...
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Louisa Chambers’ joyous, gouache Nets take their patterns from Keith Critchlow’s Order in Space. But freed from the confines of geometric precision or ruler-straight lines, her series of impossible frameworks shift and pulse, alive with rhythm and movement.
* Emmer, M. ed., 2000. Mathematics and Culture I. Milan: Springer-Verlag Italia.
