Samuel Verbiese
Besides expressionistic painting and sculpting of the figure and
portrait, I am recurrently drawn to geometric projects, probably
because my previous experience in engineering.
This year I would like to present a small 3D work assembled two years
ago by stacking my collection of little pluggable anthropomorphic
plastic parts designed in 1986 by Belgian artist and friend Paul Gonze
after Leonardo's Vitruvian man to help the NGO "Îles de Paix", founded
in Belgium by Nobel Prize Father Dominique Pire, to trigger social
fundrasing for emerging countries.
This material is being used extensively by Emeritus Professor of
Mathematics Francis Buekenhout of the Université libre de Bruxelles
and colleagues as an educational mathematical tool.
The modules are typically built fully symmetrically in their plane
with their five vertices (head and hands aligned in opposition of
feet with same 2.1cm distance between head and hands as between
feet, and twice, 4.2cm, between same side hand and foot) acting as
male/female 1cm diameter circular connectors all M on one side of
the plane and hence F at the other.
Yet, for a while some years ago, modules were produced with
several possible connector arrangements, as I discovered when
trying to stack all of them, now 101, by colors. 11 of them,
belong to these odd species (orange or blue) and I succeeded in
making a crowning branched Peace loop with 10 of them, the 11th,
sporting all M/M's, bridging it to the tower of 90, that rests on
M's.