SUPERPOSITION OF OPPOSITES

In this series I aim at visually depicting the foremost universal property of all relationships in the three spheres of material, emotion and idea. That property is to me the impermanent superposition of opposite characteristics, resulting in a state conjoining balance and chaos.

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In the material sphere, discoveries in quantum physics have rejected the model of a coherent world, and replace it with that of an uncertain world, whereby an object can concurrently take on many forms (particle and wave), be at many locations - a state quantum physicists call “superposition” and the young American physicist Hugh Everett calls the “many-worlds”. This has caused no other than Einstein to exclaim, “God does not play dice with the universe.” To which, Niels Borh, one of the lead proponents of quantum physics, had retorted, “Do not tell God what He can and cannot do.”

 

As applied to the sphere of emotions, we can associate different geometric forms to various emotions. For instance a rectangle can represent sadness, and a triangle joy. Have we not experienced the feeling of sadness and joy intermixed? Or the inseparable emotion of love and hate? Or that of hope and despair intertwined? The composer Duong Thu once confessed, “ I dream…that loss, breakup, farewell were forever banished. But that’s not in the realm of possibilities, I know.”

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That property can also be ascribed to the sphere of ideas. Invariably, creative ideas contain within themselves the seed of humanistic renovation as well as that of destruction. For instance the discovery of radiation by Madame Marie Curie laid the foundation for live-saving therapy for various cancers, but also the destructive process for the atomic bomb. Similarly, in their applications to culture, politics, economics, arts, ideas strike out in “superposition”, leading to seismic fights between balance and chaos.

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Basically my work depict objects in a state of ambivalence, imbalance, indetermination: a rectangle teetering on top of a triangle; circles “riding” a wave; a circle and a triangle emerging from a rectangle. Geometric shapes can represent either a physical object, an emotion or an idea. Although my paintings allude to an undetermined, precarious, superposited world, they also exude a sense of hope that man can find and hold on to the necessary balance to strive.