Entelechia

Entelechia
-(from Greek en in, telos purpose and echein to have)
2007
Current scale is 700 x 300 cm
A selection of spherical-ball-shaped designs in down spiraling complexity,
collagen, and needles, Plexiglas bubbles, drawing of a digestive system

The used polygons shapes are the following (simple to complex)
Triangle (trigon), quadrilateral (tetragon), pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, nonagon (enneagon), decagon, hendecagon (undecagon), dodecagon, tridecagon (triskaidecagon), tetradecagon (tetrakaidecagon), pentadecagon (pentakaidecagon), hexadecagon (hexakaidecagon), heptadecagon (heptakaidecagon), octadecagon (octakaidecagon), enneadecagon (enneakaidecagon) icosagon, triacontagon, tetracontagon, pentacontagon, hexacontagon, heptacontagon, octacontagon, enneacontagon, hectogon

When considering origin of life we usually take the evolutionary viewpoint starting from the simple and its qualitative changes toward the complex. In the installation “Entelechia” it happens reversed inside a gigantic digesting organ that swallows the complex and ejects the simple. The Installation "Entelechia" depicts a picture of a gut system that is painted straight at the gallery wall.
The term “Entelechia”, originates in the writings of Aristotle about his understanding of life and
the force of life as laid down in one of his later treatises “De Anima”.
“What we call life is feeding, growing and atrophying in a self-containing process”, Feeding, in other words, is the basic feature of life. It takes part in a dual movement: Outwardly towards a possible source of food and inwardly back to the organ itself.”
Yet this takes place in a self-containing process and these processes are in it self the living thing”.
Now this classification of life can be applied to its simplest life forms like bugs, seeds, microorganisms and of cause us as humans on a basic level, as we are as Aristotle puts it-an organ within a self-sustaining system.
“When something appears in the full splendor of its very essence and shows what it is and what it is capable of being purely through itself (eidos), it enters a state of fulfillment and contentment in which it assumes a concrete form.” Maintaining this state is what Aristotle calls “entelechy”. Entelechy may further denote a force propelling one to self-fulfillment. There is an internal drive within the organ of atrophying and intensifying that reflects the performance principle.
Within the parkour trough the digestive system- the various shapes of geometric cutting forms go on a tireless journey. The very complex-meaning freshly swallowed, higher complex species are cradled in the stomage but will soon proceed towards simpler versions of the same specimens. These shapes furthermore continuo their journey through the labyrinths of the gut system that- finally being done- will displaying the simplest triangular pyramidal shape that will periodical ejected by the disposal port (anus).
The material you can see encased in the acrylic bubbles is called collagen, an animal based tissue layer underneath the skin. This material I was able to “purchase” during a summer job in a pharmaceutical industry several years ago and I am still experimenting with it.
Collagen has the consistence of handmade paper, but when moisturized becomes flexible like thin sliced bacon. Pinned with needles to a computer generated cutting mask it transforms- during a several day long drying process between calculated fixation points.
By behaving this way it breaks the stiff geometrics and stretches into gentle curves, though forming a living geometry.
My work process started with creating computer generated three-dimensional models of the used polygons. Think about them as wire frame objects (not solid but made like out of glass, and being translucent) -so that one could see its whole symmetry. The advantage is that I can radiate this models around itself into a position that is visual interesting and less symmetrical.
Now a soccer ball surface has clear visual symmetry from our point of vision, but it also extends itself to a not perceivable backside. By proceeding in the earlier mentioned way (making them transparent) I had them both (front and back) clear visible and was separating each on of them in two-dimensional layers.The two layers with its radius and junction points were further transferred to paper on witch the collagen was fixed with needled and left to dry. After the drying process these two layers were combined by witch the “backside” was lifted 1cm, and the front side 3 cm of from the paper.This creates the effect of the work as being a spatial object.
The installation “Entelechia” used to go under name “Eat this”; -that had been a work name-tag.
As artist I feel free to change names at points that a new idea finally settles and if you read about this piece on other pages, don’t get confused about it. Insights often occur, by the fact that my works are often more than an individual sculptures but generate within bigger installations. There are temporary several works that I consider to be ongoing project by means of being unfinished or ongoing collections. “Entelechia” is a work in process, meaning that it is adjustable and extendable.
Likewise the installation-collection by the name “Skinned polygons”, “Eat this!" is visualizing an evolutionary process revolving around a round shape. (I like the way it sounds.)
It is not my aim to claim deeper meaning to my works by connecting them to specific concepts of ancient Greek philosophers- but in a way I often find their sort of reasoning fitting to a certain school of thought that I enjoy from a sculptural point of view.
Please feel free to skip this train of thoughts and just go for the visual -or being interested in this topics-to read the first chapter of the second book of Aristotle’s -De Anima.

Skinned polygones

Skinned Polygons
2001-2004
60x70x6cm
Collection of unfolded bodies, Twelve out of eighteen pieces
Paper, Steel needles, Collagen, Ink, Graphite drawing on Aquarelle paper

Originally my interest in spherical geometry came from Cartography, the study and practice of making representations of the Globe on a flat surface. Quite soon I was fascinated by spherical geometry that deals with polygons (especially triangles) on the sphere and explains how to find relations between the involved angles. This is of great importance for calculations in astronomy and earth-surface and orbital/space navigation.
The most familiar spherical polyhedron is the football (soccer ball), thought of as a spherical truncated icosahedron. Many of the cutting forms used for the work were found in contemporary ball design and went along with the collection Mappa Mundi that I was building up parallel to this work. Contrary to the unfolded balls- that were supposed to alienate in their unfolded stage- I wanted to give the skinned polygons some hint to their former spherical shape, a visual code so to speak. I especially liked the unfolded cutting form of a classical Mercator style globe were one can fit the parts together by aligning the continental shapes to each other. North and South Pole give a clear
sense of up and down and North America is to the left and East Asia to the right. I was searching for an equivalent image that would work in a more abstract but basically similar way.I found it in the simple image of text and its simple classifications of linearity. Linear writing systems are those in which the characters are composed of lines, such as the Latin alphabet.
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols, within our understanding of text it comes in the Latin alphabetic form. It is cultural as well as cognitive anchored and understood as a- left to right pattern and going from the top to the bottom of the page. The text images that I used were unique for each polyhedral design and based on a written text that I manipulated with a set of Photoshop filters to a point that they were unreadable but still recognized as an continuing text face.
I was building spatial paper models of the polygons and marked the direction of the text direction as if it would run around a balloon shape, spiraling from up to down. When these models were back in a flat unfolded shape the text image was of course aligned along the curves of its former spatial form. Through this visual presentation the observer gets a clue how the fragments are connected to each other. The text was applied to the material collagen by using mirrored ink jet prints in the stage when the material has been moisturized and can be imprinted. Through its special structure it will suck in the ink without that it would further spread into a fuzzy blur.
Likewise the skin is the bodies most outer boarder, the material of the skinned polygons is a fragile layer tissue called collagen.
Collagen is the main protein of connective tissue in animals and the most abundant protein in mammals, making up about 25% to 35% of the whole-body protein content. Collagen is one of the long, fibrous structural proteins it is responsible for skin strength.
From the Greek for glue, kolla, the word collagen means, "glue producer" and refers to the early process of boiling the skin and sinews of animals to obtain glue. Egyptians already used the Collagen adhesive about 2000 BC, and Native Americans used it in bows about 1500 years ago.
The collagen that I used was medical collagen that derived from young beef.
I obtained a great amount of it during a job doing nightshifts in a pharmaceutical company that were making anti wrinkle masks. Like most artist I do get exited discovering transitory materials used in industrial processes, there is so much material that we never get to see. Collagen was right away a big brainstormer. The material comes in 1-3 mm A3 sheets and is white, foam like and odorless. Similar to wood it seems to have an internal pointed structure, meaning one direction that one can easily rip. Moisturized it becomes flexible and can be stretched.
The polyhedral cutting forms that I used, started as construction drawings on paper and remains as underlying image. (I always liked to keep the process visible.)The wet collagen was fixed with needles to the joints of the construction drawing, Within a several day long drying process the material started to shrink. This way all the straight lines turn into curves as the tension forces start to work within the construction.
I especially like this point of the creation. From here an uncontrollable random element takes over the mathematic and geometrical concept. It’s out of my hands and I enjoy becoming the exited and surprised observer.