Emergent Nets and Strange Creatures

1/4 Sat. – 3/17 Sun.

Opening Time 10:00-18:00

VIP Party – Meet the artist，Richard Hassell  1/28 Mon. 15:00-17:00

Emergent Nets and Strange Creatures

This exhibition showcases the latest works of two ongoing series of works by Singapore-based, Australian artist Richard Hassell. Both series are based on complex geometries only discovered in the last few decades. The works combine digital design and research with handwork and traditional materials of pigments, gold leaf and washi paper.

Emergent Nets: Optical Sutras is a series of artworks on paper and metal of geometric constructions. The title of the series and exhibition combines two concepts – Emergence, and Sutras.

Emergence is a property of complex systems, where the whole has properties its parts do not have. Life is an emergent property of chemistry. The Sanskrit word Sūtra means “string or thread”. In Buddhist philosophy a sūtra weaves knowledge, threadlike, around and into a few simple words or syllables.

These artworks similarly, are composed by following short geometric rules that weave together to create an optical effect. The result is a complex net which possesses surprising, variable and beautiful effects at particular distances from the work.

The Emergent Net series are not only perceptual artworks, exploring visual phenomena, they also inspire philosophical contemplation. The winding paths, hidden patterns, and ordered complexity prompt musings on the nature of the cosmos and our challenge to see it clearly.

Strange Creatures: Complex Tessellations are a series of works which continue the project of the 20th century Dutch artist M.C. Escher into the strange 21st century world of aperiodic and fractal tilings. The strange creatures – frogs, lizards, fish, and others – fit perfectly together in complex configurations of patterns of patterns. Seemingly simple, they embody complex systems in the shape of their bodies. Like a jigsaw with infinite solutions, the creatures wind their way across their paper world, obeying the particular laws of their parallel universes. Many of the works are embellished with gold leaf, as a collaboration with Indonesian textile master Baron Manangsang, using traditional techniques from Central Java. Playful and intriguing, these pieces delight the eye and the brain.

Together, the two series share Richard Hassell’s discoveries about the strange beauty of the geometric structure of our world.