2023 Bridges Conference Art Exhibition

Eli Bornowsky

Artists

Statement

My pictures form and re-form into a variety of constellations as the composition of the picture moves and shifts. This visual operation is the basis for my investigation into the perceptual activity of looking. The drawings slippery composition emphasize close looking and exhibit similarities to musical structures such as polyrhythm and fugue. If one is committed to contemplation—the practice of sensing and thinking measured by an abstract structure rendered in physical material i.e. painting— then art becomes a space to meditate and explore being alive, away from oppressive forces and competing narratives. In this way abstract art may be a place to experiment with the freedoms we aspire to in the here and now.

Artworks

Image for entry 'Setiseits Octominos (New York, Paris, Toronto, Vancouver)'

Setiseits Octominos (New York, Paris, Toronto, Vancouver)

42.0 x 29.6 cm

Ink and graphite on paper

2022

Additional info

The drawings I have submitted are renderings of self-tiling sets. A self-tiling tile set or setiset of order n is a set of n planar shapes, each of which can be tiled with smaller replicas of the complete set of n shapes. Here we have sets of 4 octominos, tiling one another at smaller scales to a magnitude of 4. I have used the self-tiling rules to organize my intuitively drawn marks, in the same way a musician improvises with a score. Visually the work exploits the perceptual phenomenon gestalt theory has called multistability creating kaleidoscopic effects. Look closely to see the psychedelic self-tiling shapes. In some drawings up to three unique sets of 4 octominos are puzzled inside one another. Special thanks to Lee Sallows.