Infinitude: Investigating the Aesthetics of Complex Patterns through Printmaking

Abstract

This doctoral project presents an aesthetic inquiry into works on paper and installation that are distinguished by a contemplative development of non-mimetic patterns. Relief etchings and linocuts dominate the research, spanning a range of media, including drawings, monoprints, kinetic sculpture, and video. This research is based upon an improvisational methodology that is diversified in response to the interactivity between ideation and material engagement. Change and constancy, motion and stasis, and form and formlessness are co-dependent, conceptual binaries establishing the foundation of this dialectical inquiry. Seeking to reconcile a transformative flux with constancy, geometry is examined as a means of understanding the relational dynamic between mind and matter and as a reference for a speculative, cosmological inquiry. Through my studio research, I have developed a pictorial language from essential motifs, and the exegesis argues that through its metaphoric agency, the particularity of art indicates an immanent materiality. This is consolidated by my research on how physics informs our understanding of materiality, with etchings made in response to the philosophy of physicist David Bohm.