MATH AS SCULPTOR: MIDTOWN INSTALLATION

An eight-foot tall lozenge, sculpted from Dali-esque stainless steel lace, sits on the corner of 54th and Avenue of the Americas, waiting for the world to change. Manhattan air shifts and sifts through its holes, a fusion of art nouveau and futuristic design. SEED54, a magnificent new sculpture created by Haresh Lalvani, has been waiting there just since last November (2012) when it was installed, down the street from MOMA, in front of an office building, as plaza art.

Photo: Dave Pinter

 

Fascinated by the intersection of art and science, Lalvani is a renaissance talent, an inventor, trained as both an sculptor and an architect, with a long and deep interest in patterns created by nature. The patterns can be expressed mathematically. The math can be expressed visually. Fractals, spirals, tiling, reductionist, and expansionist shapes, are beautiful in form, function, and power. Lalvani’s sculptures embody his personal passion for morphology, the study of nature as designer, and the basic principles that define all shapes.  “Every piece is an experiment, and teaches us something about the fundamental nature of form, space, material, and process. In nature, these are one.”

Photo: Courtesy Haresh Lalvani

There’s beauty in the order that natural forces organize. There’s both security and genius in knowing what comes next. Endless repetitions of shapes make up the morphological genome. Lalvani likes to stretch it, though. He breaks rules: he makes hexagons drape around curved surfaces. How? He just makes them irregular. Nothing is equal. Nothing is off-limits to reconsideration. Everything can mutate. Form is process.

Photo: Courtesy Haresh Lalvani

SEED54 is Lalvani’s first commissioned outdoor sculpture. This piece, along with many other Lalvanis, was formed in collaboration with Milgo-Bufkin, the art-metal fabricators behind artists such as Richard Serra, Sol Lewitt and Frank Stella.