A geometer cabinetmaker
A young furniture designer, the Dutch cabinetmaker Sebastian Brakjovic, who lives in Paris, recently exhibited his works, with their highly accomplished forms, at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Paris. "I am always looking for movement in my creations," says the artist. He is particularly interested in the notions of perspective and the distortion of shapes, and some of his pieces of furniture seem directly inspired by mathematical concepts. The very title of this exhibition, Vanishing Point, shows how central a concern perspective is for this cabinetmaker, who likes to say that his vision "addresses the question of non-finiteness." Isn't this "non-finiteness" also present in the name and the shape of the exhibition's star piece — the "Fibonacci" armchair, unmistakably evoking the coiling of a logarithmic spiral, which does appear in a geometric representation of the sequence highlighted by the famous Leonardo of Pisa?
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Josef and Anni Albers, other inspired geometers
This time it's Milan hosting another encounter between art and geometry: the exhibition A Beautiful Confluence, Anni and Josef Albers and the Latin American World, running until 21 February 2016 at the Mudec (Museo delle Culture), devoted to the South American influences in their work. The painter Josef Albers (1888-1976), fascinated by geometry and by repetitive sequences of figures, gave us the series Homage to the Square, which we have presented on several occasions in our pages (see Tangente n°145 or 151). This art of repetition is found throughout the Milan exhibition, both in Josef's paintings and in the weavings of his wife Anni, which draw heavily on pre-Columbian art.
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Chocolate geometry
They have the shape of bricks from the famous Lego construction toy, they meet Lego's specifications, they interlock like Lego — but they don't have its colours… since they're made of chocolate. Yes indeed, you can now build all (or almost all) the constructions, geometric or otherwise, that you used to build with Lego, except they'll be edible. So Lego enthusiasts who used to recreate Escher's impossible staircases and Penrose triangles with those little bricks will now be able to lick their fingers!