Fractal Syncretism

Spring festival International House,

University of California of Berkeley,

20th April 2002

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In greater and greater numbers, people are beginning to believe that painting is dead.
Now after an incredibly fecund period in the 20th century, full of artistic developments, it is time to open new paths, recognising that profit is not, and should not be, the principal criterion, dominating contemporary Art and driving creative expression. Otherwise those who believe that Art is dead will inevitably be proven right.
This realisation, which is emerging everywhere in the world, exists on every level: political, economic and environmental. Here we give priority to the cultural level.
After having explored the medium, the color, the light, the form; after having been ideological, expiatory, or activist; after having been the mirror of our consumer society, or the depiction of our unconscious, Pictorial Art is ready to close the chapter on the 20th century and start a fresh page.
This new Art must not be only the representation of what we are, but also the representation of what we would like to be.
The contemporary western art scene does not always give the artist the liberty to adhere to this ideal. We are too often forced to work under the constraints of public or private expectations, where the prevailing taste is toward the large and the conventional. Rather than painting according to the inspiration of our sensibility, which might tell us that a more modest format offers a greater accessibility without sacrificing either integrity or scope, we are impressed onto an «Art assembly line» reluctant slaves to fashion and unwilling panderers to profit.
I would like to propose a new path, one I consider rich with possibilities: it is an Art form based on a contemplative approach, drawing for its inspiration upon the poetic representation of the fractal world. This art integrates the notions of fractal, rather than Euclidian, geometry and is engaged by the creative and chaotic process of dreaming.
This form of inspired art represents the world with more fidelity, its architecture, its different aspects and the behaviour of matter, living or not, at the scale of infinitely large, as well as the infinitely small, in order to reveal its complexity, and also is incredible poetry.
This art form is a reflexion of creative process itself, and shows us that the three axes of Art, Spirituality, and Science, despite their differing criteria of truth, are each an exploration and an expression of the mystery of creation.
This Pictorial Proposition I have chosen to give the name: FRACTAL SYNCRETISM