Within the last two decades, I have turned my pictorial interests to the depiction of regular polyhedra, their history since the classical period, and their different motivations. Plato believed that regular polyhedra represented the 5 elements of the universe and in how they were a sacred part of geometry. For modern geometers, the universe fits together into the shape of a dodecahedron, somewhat like a soccer ball.
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«Platonic Interactions» began with the beauty I found in Plato’s forms and how their own mathematical formations involved the proportionality of the golden mean. Their geometries stand as a unified and congruent visual harmony. Akin to mandalas for meditation, they evoke the world at large. My vision of the regular polyhedra is set by having them nested within each other in an openly latticed forest of complementary and analogous hues and shapes. Although regular polyhedra are essentially symmetrical, the rotation of their three-dimensional structures allows for a multiplicity of visual angles, with each one filled by wondrous feats of energy. «Platonic Interactions» is an orchestration of life-inspiring images, arranged to the melodic musings of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Prelude – Cello Suite 3 – as interpreted by Jon Sayles.
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22’ x 30”. Body color and graphite on paper, ©2008
As early as 2005, I had begun a series of oil paintings and drawings entitled «Infinity,» which were based on the premises previously mentioned. In this context, the painting’s perimeter serves the same function as the golden mean does for proportionality. The superimposition of the triangle’s right angle over the surface of the painting reinforces the golden mean. The very surface of the painting and the forms expressed on it imply infinitude.
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Since 2018, no longer involved in the medium of oils, I have dedicated my attention to digital paintings. Printed and manipulated on canvas, today these digital paintings count sixty four images. «Platonic Interactions» uses fifty of these images, sequentially arranged. They are further composited into two tessellated tiles (like mosaics), one 5 x 5 squares and the other 7 x 7 squares – as in Figure 2 above.
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Ricardo F Morin
Edited by Billy Bussell Thompson
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Bala Cynwyd, Pa. August 3, 2023
Observations On Perception 