As a recent article in Yes Magazine explains, creativity is not exclusive to artists ;
‘Creativity is simply our ability to dream things up and make them happen.’ Yet
sometimes great art is needed to examine and value to the creativity of others.
‘The Three Punctures’ is a
solid enough looking sculpture, resembling perhaps
a giant screw or something a
Deity would use to bolt together the panels of the sky. It is dyed the blue black colour of a raven’s
wing and is punctured by holes. On first look it seems simply an interesting
and pleasing object. But on closer examination the structure reveals itself to
be something far more intriguing. The shape is not simply a shape and the gaps within
it are not simply gaps. In fact, what the artist has created with this piece is
a beautiful, sensual and tactile representation of the ‘Costa Minimal Surface’, which was discovered in
1982 by the Brazilian mathematician Celso José da Costa. To quote Wolfram Mathworld the ‘Costa Minimal Surface’is a surface which
‘has no boundary and does not intersect itself’.
The sculpture challenges our
perceptions of how a solid object is experienced. It also challenges a reviewer’s
ability to find non-mathematical language to describe his interaction with it. The
front of the sculpture opens into a contorted funnel, which has two holes in
it. Looking through the hole on my right, I could clearly see the room on the
other side. Yet no matter what angle I looked into the hole I could see no
physical passage through which the hole went. It did not seem to go through
anything. I put my arm in, and then keeping my arm within the hole I leaned
forward and looked over the funnel. I did not see my arm. Instead I saw the
solid physical darkness of the structure, the solid form through which the hole
passed. Yet when I looked again at the hole I could see absolutely no evidence
of the passage way. The hole was utterly lacking in depth.
I spent a long time walking
around the object trying and failing to understand how it managed to contort
and play with solidity and nothingness. Bewildered, I took time out to speak to John Holstead, who told me he had thought about the structure for two years before
he began planning it out: ‘One mistake and the entire thing would have failed.’
John then explained the math of the
sculpture. As he spoke in his soft easy way it all began to make sense. For a
moment I almost grasped it, the whole incredible mathematical artistry of it. But when I looked again at the object the words in my head vanished. All I could
do was look, touch, wonder and finally accept the object for what it was; an
object of beauty and contemplation.
The
exhibition runs until the 1st of August, and is open weekdays from
11am in The Mechanical Soils Lab, by
the Bank of Ireland Theatre on NUI Galway campus.
Keep up to date by following this
blog on twitter at: @RBizzness
