Open

Provenance

Open 1977. Vinyl about 12'x12'x12'

This work was made following a sudden insight that ocurred while I was in the midst of working on the closed sets "Anolatabulata" and "Con(jug)ates." It was very exiting because its surface, in contrast to the closed sets, was infinite in extension. I imagined it growing out of the studio down the elevator shaft out into the streets. Made by joining paired accumulations of annuli of similar size in a rotationally symmetric manner, the resultant shape is asymptotic until the outside edge equals the diameter of the originating annuli. Then it begins to frill. There were several variations.Those made from narrow strips looked like tornados while those with large width to diameter ratios looked like tutus.

Although apparently simple, and unlike the "Anolatabulata" of no interest to the mathematical community, to me the shape was puzzling and led to a series of sculptural queries entitled "Plainsong". Through these I learned how and when the funnel shape reversed, all the while imagining the moment it did so to be a diagram for the moment when accumulated black holes might explode into a new universe. It turned out that "Open" was the first work in an entire series entitled "Universe" the many aspects of which were subsumed under the title "St.Laurent's Bubble Chamber" exhibited in Kiev in 1994.

While trying to analyze what was happening in "Open" I made the first of a useful set of paper dot drawings. These ones looked like the music that Steve Reich might play.