Vincent Van Dongen
Artists
Vincent Van Dongen
Independent Researcher
Montreal
Statement
I obtained a PhD in computer sciences from Belgium in 1991. My thesis was on systolic and periodic arrays. I moved to Montreal to become a researcher between 1991 and 1997. In parallel, I've always been active in visual art, taking art classes at night while doing my PhD. Around 2020, I became interested in modular art and in particular aperiodic tiling and the so-called Ein-Stein problem. My studies in that field include the search for new tilings and their physical implementation into sculptures.
Artworks
Lifted-orange
30 x 24 x 5 cm
Mix-media (metal on canvas)
2021
This design is inspired from the well-known aperiodic square-triangle tiling. It makes use of tile lifting, an operation that consists in placing the 2D tiles into a higher dimensional space. Here, each square tile of the original tiling is being lifted. First, we divide each square into 4 isosceles right triangles. Then we lift each triangle into an equilateral triangle. As a result, squares become pyramids and all pieces of this sculpture are identical equilateral triangles. Note that aperiodicity of this lifted tiling is not enforced by the shape of its monotile, the equilateral triangle, but is created by properly assembling the triangles together.