breaking the apparent (square)
Amy Blakemore
Graham Collins
Katie Hagar
Leslie Hewitt
Molly Zuckerman-Hartung
November 7 - January 10, 2027
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I try to imagine a perfect square. I close my eyes and hold it in my mind: harmonious, precisely parallel and perpendicular to the horizon, perfect 90-degree angles. The lines from corner to corner have no weight, the points where the lines meet are light, graceful junctions; it is simply one continuous line, outlining this shape; at once, a square. I hold it in my mind and empty it of all I can, remove as much of the world from within it. Could I have come up with this shape on my own? Undoubtably, no. To me, now, the square presents as eternal or at the very least primordial, as inseparable from existence as language, but it was once invented, wasn’t it? There is little I can think of that remotely fulfills the requisite geometry that might have foretold its existence. Salt perhaps, other minerals, some forms of ice. Its origin must be human, born out of empirical analysis and metaphysics. (To say only this of triangles: they appear EVERYWHERE in the natural world.)
Conceptually, a square is perfect: its radial symmetry, its repetitious equilibrium, its balance. In physically bringing one to being, can the output ever truly be? As such an elemental shape, its origins so archaic as to be unknown, in manifestation it rarely matters if the measurements are fractionally off. There is an allowance, certainly, of some amount of imperfection; even an imprecise square functions, it performs. It is square, we know it to be square, even if it isn’t. In practice, it doesn’t have to be exact, nor does it carry less if it is less than square. Still, precision and exactitude are inextricable from the definition of what makes a square what it is.
State-of-the-art drafting and machining insure something close to perfection, producing whatever use is intended. 90-degree angles alone are ubiquitous in the humanmade so that parts easily receive their counterparts, such as with the edge of one tile to the next or a door into a doorframe, or sequentially, such as pages in a book. Distorting the properties of the square to include rectilinearity introduces everything from architecture to innumerable frames, either window or photographic, a fragment of view; this selection draws boundaries, delineating one thing from the next. It is good to know where one stops and one begins, but is it? This is the seduction of the square, that knowing is even possible, that knowledge is simple, finite.
We can distort the square further, in another dimension, adding depth and volume, arriving at the cube. A solid even mass, resting easily on one another. But here, with what is so simple to describe with a square (four 90-degree angles, four equal length sides) becomes more complex with the cube (a six-sided object made with equal length-sided squares, each square touching four squares, one on all four of each square’s sides at 90-degrees to each other)—the evenness of these shapes, their reliance on equal measurements—there is more now that can be undone, one slight change and it may be cubic but not a cube. A degree off; a measurement wrong—and for what? A flat roof is no good; rain has nowhere to go. Water pools, sits, erodes, eventually leaking in. How lonely the cube’s opposing sides must be for each other.
And is that of any matter anyway, for the power of the square resides in its two-dimensionality, its resolute flatness, an image operating purely as idea, a utopian proposition, a denial of the chaotic asymmetries of life.
Then we must talk of protecting the square, preserving it; acknowledge its fragility.
And while the square is a human construct, divorced from nature, the imperfection of manifesting the square in practice is also utterly human. These two aims coexist in perennial tension: the reach for perfection, the inability to manifest the ideal.
We produce squares constantly, repeatedly. In the room I’m sitting writing this, I am surrounded by squares and square-likeness. Has my eye been nurtured to love a straight line or a perfect horizon (perfectly parallel to what, the horizontal line between my two eyes? Is that from where all of this is ultimately derived? From our symmetrically arranged selves, our bipedal upright gait?) and a perfectly perpendicular line intersecting it, at say, the corner of the room, where these two walls meet? Or is the nature of this love innate?
Amy Blakemore
Graham Collins
Katie Hagar
Leslie Hewitt
Molly Zuckerman-Hartung
November 7 - January 10, 2027
I try to imagine a perfect square. I close my eyes and hold it in my mind: harmonious, precisely parallel and perpendicular to the horizon, perfect 90-degree angles. The lines from corner to corner have no weight, the points where the lines meet are light, graceful junctions; it is simply one continuous line, outlining this shape; at once, a square. I hold it in my mind and empty it of all I can, remove as much of the world from within it. Could I have come up with this shape on my own? Undoubtably, no. To me, now, the square presents as eternal or at the very least primordial, as inseparable from existence as language, but it was once invented, wasn’t it? There is little I can think of that remotely fulfills the requisite geometry that might have foretold its existence. Salt perhaps, other minerals, some forms of ice. Its origin must be human, born out of empirical analysis and metaphysics. (To say only this of triangles: they appear EVERYWHERE in the natural world.)
Conceptually, a square is perfect: its radial symmetry, its repetitious equilibrium, its balance. In physically bringing one to being, can the output ever truly be? As such an elemental shape, its origins so archaic as to be unknown, in manifestation it rarely matters if the measurements are fractionally off. There is an allowance, certainly, of some amount of imperfection; even an imprecise square functions, it performs. It is square, we know it to be square, even if it isn’t. In practice, it doesn’t have to be exact, nor does it carry less if it is less than square. Still, precision and exactitude are inextricable from the definition of what makes a square what it is.
State-of-the-art drafting and machining insure something close to perfection, producing whatever use is intended. 90-degree angles alone are ubiquitous in the humanmade so that parts easily receive their counterparts, such as with the edge of one tile to the next or a door into a doorframe, or sequentially, such as pages in a book. Distorting the properties of the square to include rectilinearity introduces everything from architecture to innumerable frames, either window or photographic, a fragment of view; this selection draws boundaries, delineating one thing from the next. It is good to know where one stops and one begins, but is it? This is the seduction of the square, that knowing is even possible, that knowledge is simple, finite.
We can distort the square further, in another dimension, adding depth and volume, arriving at the cube. A solid even mass, resting easily on one another. But here, with what is so simple to describe with a square (four 90-degree angles, four equal length sides) becomes more complex with the cube (a six-sided object made with equal length-sided squares, each square touching four squares, one on all four of each square’s sides at 90-degrees to each other)—the evenness of these shapes, their reliance on equal measurements—there is more now that can be undone, one slight change and it may be cubic but not a cube. A degree off; a measurement wrong—and for what? A flat roof is no good; rain has nowhere to go. Water pools, sits, erodes, eventually leaking in. How lonely the cube’s opposing sides must be for each other.
And is that of any matter anyway, for the power of the square resides in its two-dimensionality, its resolute flatness, an image operating purely as idea, a utopian proposition, a denial of the chaotic asymmetries of life.
Then we must talk of protecting the square, preserving it; acknowledge its fragility.
And while the square is a human construct, divorced from nature, the imperfection of manifesting the square in practice is also utterly human. These two aims coexist in perennial tension: the reach for perfection, the inability to manifest the ideal.
We produce squares constantly, repeatedly. In the room I’m sitting writing this, I am surrounded by squares and square-likeness. Has my eye been nurtured to love a straight line or a perfect horizon (perfectly parallel to what, the horizontal line between my two eyes? Is that from where all of this is ultimately derived? From our symmetrically arranged selves, our bipedal upright gait?) and a perfectly perpendicular line intersecting it, at say, the corner of the room, where these two walls meet? Or is the nature of this love innate?
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