Combination, 2010
COMBINATION is an art work consisting of a 30 minutes animation and a large panel where 256 figures are placed, showing frame by frame its built-in structure. It’s based on the idea of image movement. The work presents the following proposition
Step 1: Insert an asymmetrical drawing inside a square (name it unit).
Step 2: Multiply the unit by 4. Turn them in movements 90, 180, 270 and 360 degrees, so that they become 4 different units. Make it a group, form a square (name it figure).
Step 3: From the obtained figure, turn it’s figures in movements 90, 180, 270 and 360 degrees, developing all new possible figures with no repetition.
Words activate imagination to different forms of presentation. Mine was a possibility.
One simple figure, submitted to the proposed actions, results in a series of new figures, as a way to its resolution. The animation shows all images obtained, arranged in slow motion – no beginning or end. The work turns, modifies, repeats itself, but goes nowhere. It’s present time. Suggests that there is an active perception from the viewer, who can do any kind of interpretation. It’s not the intent to discover the method itself, because it’s serial and simple. The main idea is inside the gap between the images. It could spare time to think about the combination itself, or maybe in other new possibilities.
I’m questioning myself about this work and lots of questions are still around – why do I apply serialism? It’s an obsessed ritual covering irrational abysm? Is the serial an idea of the absurd?
In first place this work can be related to logic thoughts. But I found a profound connection to the abstraction, idealist, detach from the material world. Forms can take ideas, like metaphors. It’s intangibleness of art, that’s looking forward the order itself.
Mathematics has extended use in art, but it’s not a thesis I’m looking after. It’s not a prove, or graphic explanation of any system. The game, the process development themselves were more interesting. The work COMBINATION was a hypothesis putted into practice. It represents materially an idea, separated of a functional purpose. For me, it’s absolutely abstraction.
Karen Axelrud, 2010.