These Fractal Sculptures Seem to Climb Gallery Walls
Not sure why, but we love fractals— whether they’re in trippy videosor the grocery store, theyjust draw you in. Two visual artists based in So Paulo — Janaina Mello of So Gotardo, Brazil, and Daniele Francesco Landiniof Milan, Italy — create beautiful 3-D fractal sculptures using rope. They have mounted twentydifferent exhibits of these sculptures, which they call”Ciclotramas,” throughout Brazil and Italy since 2010, re-imagining the “choreography of intertwining lines”with each exhibit to mirrorthe shapely,geometriccomplexityof organic objects.
Mello and Landini suspend and splay hemp and colorful cloth ropes from ceilings, coil thick lengths of rope down flights of stairs, and fray and tack delicate ends of unwound twine to gallerywalls. Each installation seems to grow before your eyes, evoking the mathematically precise yet occurrence of fractals in nature: tree branches, feathers, leaf veins, blood vessels, plant roots, tentacles, fern fronds, honeycombs, river deltas, brain synapses, seashells, lightning, cauliflower, the bronchi of lungs, the crystal latticesof snowflakes and salt, the lipid bloomsof spoiled chocolate.
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