The math behind the art
By: Virginia Pelley
Special to The Examiner
September 9, 2009
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Go figure: Owen Schuh explores the connections between nature and randomness in his models and installations.
(Courtesy photo)
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SAN FRANCISCO — Order and chaos get equal play in the work of San Jose-based artist Owen Schuh, whose latest show, “The Conceit of Counting,” opens at the Cain Schulte Gallery in The City on Friday.
Intrigued by the relationship between nature and mathematical rules, Schuh plugs data into algorithms and creates three-dimensional paintings and installations based on his results.
Pointed, precisely spaced drops of paint fall and harden on his chosen surface, creating complex models of organic forms, such as anemone or lichen, that are studies of time and the chaos inherent in the natural world.
It’s not the idea that mathematical systems can predict or create perfect “natural” forms — flocks of birds, slime molds or ant hills, for example — that intrigues Schuh. It’s that they can’t.
“Randomness is always lurking around the corner,” Schuh says. “This was something the ancient Greeks struggled with. The diagonal of a square whose sides are all one ends up being the square root of two, an irrational number that cannot be expressed as any sort of fraction and thus has an infinite decimal expansion.
“That such a simple relationship as the diagonal of a square to its sides should be inexpressible as a simple ratio was profoundly troubling to them,” he says. “In a similar way, although my paintings develop according to well-defined rules, the results are really surprising and unpredictable beyond a few steps.”
Growing up in small-town Stevens Point, Wis., Schuh spent a lot of time outdoors, biking, cross-country skiing and hiking. Early on, he was struck by the complexity he observed in tree branches and leaves and the impossibility of recreating it.
“Of course, a photograph would capture each and every leaf and branch perfectly, but that wasn’t really what I was after,” he says. “I wanted to capture that feeling of being overwhelmed and unable to grasp something as seemingly simple as a breeze blowing through the leaves. I think it was in part this desire that began to lead me back to mathematics as a tool for trying to grasp this complexity.”
Schuh’s work also explores the relationship between art and the viewer, the role examination has in creating the image.
“I find something strange about this notion that the image of the object is actually created by the act of looking,” he says. “The more I look the more I see, but I am limited by very human factors like time and resolve.
“There will always be things I haven’t seen and places I haven’t explored.”
IF YOU GO
Owen Schuh: The Conceit of Counting
Where: Cain Schulte Gallery, 714 Guerrero St., San Francisco
When: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday for opening reception; show closes Oct. 17
Contact: (415) 543-1550; www.cainschulte.com
