Ghee Beom KIM
Yet to be discovered and never-before-seen images lie dormant under the shallow stream of our imagination, waiting only to be unearthed if we care to wade in and explore. Like an infant exploring beach side, every time I turn a pebble covered in sand, I am fascinated to find new creatures. Mathematics combined with esthetics serves as a marvelous tool to further my understanding of Universe and its complex spatial orders, not to mention the grand intention of its Designer. I am only glad to take a part in it.
For many years I have known the unusually close relationship among square, hexagon and cube and used the principle to derive cube from hexagon thanks to our cerebral ability to perceive hexagon as cube. But this fractal image describes the aforementioned relationship more emphatically: cube encased in hexagons and squares. It was a completely unexpected outcome that I had no inkling about, a pleasant surprise for me!
To create this artwork circles of various sizes were employed on 3 ellipses loci. The resulting image, somewhat resembling Möbius Strip, is quite striking, evoking sense of eternity, infinity, duality and sensuality.
One thing that I noticed is that while it is made up with circles, which is inherently 2D, the object has very strong 3 dimensional optical effect.
Ellipses are incrementally rotated on circular locus to generate this image. The outer outline still remains closely circular whereas the inner outline depicts a fruit shaped (Korean pear) entity at the center, strongly resembling an embryo. The overall effect of these Incremental lines display three dimensional quality.
By pure coincident the Korean title "배" has dual meaning of embryo and Korean pear, whose shape resembles an apple more than a pear.