Circles — ziyagao

April 19 2024

at Chinatown Centre, 222 Spadina Ave, one night only.

the shapes nearest shapelessness awe us most, suggest the god: elemental air in a spin, counterclockwise for us, lets its needlepoint funnel down and gives us

a rugged variety of the formless formed: and the great slow stir of the Sargasso cycles the weed in, a holding, motion's holding: snow from snow kicks up in a fume

and sprinkles audibly the stripped lilac shrubs: the shape of air, deep as material, blunt off a cliff face: fire as it crowns out over forests and clings to

itself exploding as if into a new fire: the gods near their elemental or invisible selves turn or sweep or stand still and fill us with the terror of apprehending:

- (A. R. Ammons) Sphere: The form of Motion

Angels
Andrew Conway
(Watercolour on Paper)
13 x 10 “

CIRCLES

Also see: spiral, loop, cycle, wheel, sequence, coterie

Exhibition Date: April 2024 Circles are omnipresent, never unheeding, my eyes never tune them out, registering their form whenever present. It may be due to their symmetry; shapes such as rectangles have such a wide range of variations; when placed on an angle, they display a new form. whereas a circle will always be a circle. With their lack of/unlimited faces, they sometimes bypass the theory of affordances, that depending on the angle you interact with an artifact, the outcome differs. This simply doesn’t apply to a spherical object; when you remove the 3rd dimension in which we live within, it becomes a singularity. This is most evident in materials of metal and glass, and light sources. When circles interact with each other, their lack of faces does not allow for them to interact above a singular point without overlap, there forms empty space between the shapes that highlight the circularity of the original circle.

I reflect on the circle as an universal symbol; Plato’s forms argue that the perfect circle is the core of being, a shape:

above and beyond the physical world. The circle is the most perfect form; therefore the Creator made the world circular, forming it like himself. Aristotle agrees with Plato about the shape of the universe; Further, this circular motion is necessarily primary. For the perfect is naturally prior to the imperfect, and the circle is a perfect thing.

As for the soul as a circle, Plotinus strengthens the idea:

Every soul that knows its history is aware, also, that its movement, unthwaited, is not that of an outgoing line; its natural course may be likened to that in which a circle turns not upon some external but on its own centre, the point to which it owes its rise. The soul's movement will be about its source; to this it will hold, poised intent towards that unity to which all souls should move and the divine souls always move, divine in virtue of that movement. . . .

Looking from another perspective, look to the Circle of Tao; "

Tao is the universe “the mother of all things”. And it manifests itself as a flow of unceasing change continuously moving toward a state of balance and harmony. We are all Tao and part of this natural process of change."

With our current understanding of how life works, quantum physics, and all that exists, from us to distant stars, it is all made of a particle of energy in motion (O) .

Taoist texts speak of “life in the round”. The “round” is symbolized by the circle of the Tai Chi Tu which encompasses both energies. Living “life in the round” means to connect and flow with yin and yang as they pass through one phase of change and then the other. Reconciling them is to bring them into a harmonious whole.

While the concepts of change and balance found within yin and yang are fairly straightforward, to see the equality of opposites and their fundamental unity is not an easy undertaking.

Connecting pictorial symbols with the theory of affordances, the idea that an object is defined and lives by its surrounding environment and the entities it interacts with. It may read as ordinary thought, but when you bring it to the forefront, new connections are made that inadvertently have been there all along; being the reason you like certain things, and hate others. symbols contain the essence of the emotion involved, a smile is understood worldwide, notwithstanding age and cultures; as a circle is understood, and often, in many cultures and historical contexts, put on a pedestal above other forms. It is hard to deny that the shape of the sun, the moon, and our planet must be of great importance.