Mathematics in My Work

Perfection and Beauty

by Agnes Denes

I use mathematics in my work to base my images on a non-erratic additional language, another dimension: malleable, unemotional and perfect. I can use it as canvas that I stretch and pull in any direction, wrap around my concepts in a multitude of ways, yet they remain perfect in any form I give them. I can use it to build future cities in the shape of flying bird pyramids and build underwater cities and space stations with self-repairing units to sustain humanity when living on Earth becomes difficult or no longer an option. I use it to visualize philosophical concepts I call Visual Philosophy that go back to the seventies. These works are actually visual mathematics. They appear in my early Philosophical Drawings as symbolic logic in The Human Argument, and as theoretical crystallography in Thought Complex. I create a form, then take it apart, tug at it, fragment it, and put it together in a different shape. I create and undo, re-create and transform.

I very often use fragmentations and distortions in order to see things from a multitude of perspectives, as space as well as concepts, yet even then, the images are “perfect” because they are based on mathematics. I want to see what makes something what it is, from inside out from beginning to end. It is like witnessing the birth of form, the formation of form, creativity at its purest.

Perfection is not an end by itself, it is a moment of truth, a fresh breeze that quickly sinks into the fabric of reality.

The Pyramid Series that runs through my work for the past thirty years, adopts an abstract mathematical theory of probability to create a variety of structures, The Perfect Pyramids. They embody human knowledge and the paradoxes of existence to serve as complex metaphors for our time, vehicles through which analytical propositions can be visualized.

The Perfect Pyramids combine visual art with future architecture to depict a civilization undergoing major transformations to overcome its mistakes. These forms represent our era, social complexities and offer future travel in space and survival on earth. They extend their wisdom (perfection), to help save humanity. They are unique in that through them, philosophy and mathematics becomes visual.

In addition to perfection, The Pyramids are ethical structures that deal with social reality, thus represent fate where the individual’s dilemma is superseded by the predicament of the species. Their “perfection” is the language of logic and mathematics while they communicate ideal measures of principles and values with great simplicity and visual beauty.

Similarly, my earlier series the Map Projections visualize the changing aspects of reality and involve distortions of perspective, probability and space relations. The Map Projections were witty transformations of our globe into various trigonometric shapes: doughnuts, dodecahedrons, eggs, cubes, pyramids lemons and hot dogs.

They are funny, even adorable, yet they are still maps of our Earth. The projections are all accurate because I used mathematics to create them.

I apply mathematics to plant forests in Europe and Australia, planting the trees into complex mathematical patterns. My reason here is to unite the human intellect with the majesty of nature. The trees are still themselves, created by nature, but the forest is planted according to an intricate mathematical pattern.

I love mathematics because I could humanize it, and in turn it gave me perfection and beauty.

© 2005 Agnes Denes

| page up |