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Expert: - 10/23/2005


Question
What is the maths behind the Black O wall drawings by Kerrie Poliness?

See

http://www.artspace.org.nz/shows/98_4.html

http://www.gertrude.org.au/exhibition.php?id=299
.


Answer
Hi, Nick,
From what I can see, the figures are just some kind of polyhedral figure of no particular mathematical significance.  

However, the statement in the caption about:

"In these works the artist has structured the pictorial plane with two vanishing points towards which all lines converge or diverge."

comes from a branch of geometry called Projective Geometry, in which parallel lines are assumed to meet at a 'point at infinity'.  Of course, on the picture this point is a reality, in the way that a photograph of a parallel-line figure, such as railroad tracks, appears to have the lines meet at some point.

Does this help?

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