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The
work of Apostolos Kilessopoulos and its intrinsic relation to science (page
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| I shall now attempt a brief documentation of the artist's special relationship with Astronomy and Mathematics. In the astronomic pictures I considered useful to include and which were chosen specifically for this purpose, one can see the similarity they bear to Kilessopoulos' paintings. His paintings however are also related to the Theory of Fractals, which is still being developed in the field of Mathematics as well as in that of Mathematical Physics. Fractals are geometric entities whose dimension is not integer but fractional; they represent objects or systems of such, of immense microscopic or macroscopic complexity, (e.g. cells, snowflakes, ground or shore relief, clusters of galaxies etc.), and are closely related to the Theory of Chaos. A chaotic structure is composed of self-similar and ordered substructures and is governed by certain laws. "Chaos" of course is but a weak dependence of movement and evolution of a system on the initial conditions. In this way, the Theory of Chaos can be metaphorically applied to the artist's creational technique. The following parallelism would be necessary according to my opinion: as in a chaotic dynamic system we usually have information which is expressed by transcendental numbers, that is numbers whose infinite number of decimal digits can only be approximated, in the same way, "development" in the artist's paintings can be described by similar attributes. His paintings seem to portray physical systems that satisfy Boltzmann's ergodic principle; in other words, systems whose evolution is no longer dependent on the initial conditions and can occupy every possible statistical state, according to their total energy. Such ergodic systems which are purely biological or chemical have been studied with considerable success by Prigogine and Nicolis: this is certainly striking!
Still, what I have to stress is the ordered structures which coexist in chaotic systems and in Kilessopoulos' works. There is a tendency towards disintegration, a propensity towards diffusion and spreading that is connected with the concept of entropy, as I have already mentioned; in sort, with disorder. At the same time, when the paintings are observed in detail, they reveal a lawful order. At this point allow me another parallelism. At all the levels of the organization of the Universe, at all the states of its hierarchy, (e.g. galaxies, stellar clusters and the stars themselves), one can observe a "battle" between the tendency towards disorder and disintegration -which is expressed by the increase of entropy- and the tendency towards organization and order -which is expressed by the gravitational forces. These two tendencies are perpetually "fighting" each other and the local state of the Universe at any given time is determined by their balance. I believe that this Heraklitian "war" is incorporated in Kilessopoulos' post-1977 works. To finish, I would like to pose the following question: why is Kilessopoulos' work connected with the Exact Sciences, while he himself does not have but rudimentary knowledge of this field? I think that I have already answered and I am ready to review my answer. According to certain comparatively recent cosmological theories, the observed image of the Universe has precisely the form it has, in order that we can observe, study and comprehend its mechanism. In other words, the Anthropic Principle, as it is called, expresses the view that the fundamental physical constants, (i.e. the gravity constant, the mass and the charge of the proton, the fine structure constant etc.), have exactly the value we measure, because if they were even slightly different, it would be impossible for atoms and molecules to be formed and to form either cells or even stars or planets; thus, the creation and evolution of life, and of course of free and conscious men who could comprehend themselves and the surrounding Universe, would be impossible! That is to say the Universe "creates" beings capable of understanding its structure and morphology. In my opinion, the omniscience and omnipotence of God explains all the above. So, the answer to my question is evident: everything seems to have a common origin; even the human body has been built up of a kind of stellar ash, that is chemical elements like carbon, nitrogen and oxygen which were formed by thermonuclear fusion reactions in the interior of a high mass star, which "died" through a gigantic supernova explosion a few billion years ago, and later on gave birth -through the gravitational contraction of the ejected gas and dust- to our solar system; on the other hand, the Anthropic Principle is logical and seems to be confirmed. Thus, certain artists, like many scientists, are enraptured by the "music of the heavenly spheres" and can not only capture it, as the Pythagoreans would have said, but can also express it in their works. This "music" is not only connected to physical phenomena but also to metaphysical ones, since the whole heaven can be incorporated in a human psyche. So, when Kilessopoulos told me in the past that a doctor, friend of his, saw tissue and body organs in his paintings, I was not surprised. I had realized a priori that some scientists can create Art, inasmuch as certain artists can create Science. This is the case with Apostolos Kilessopoulos, whose work I would like to characterize as revelational, metaphysical, timeless and dynamic. S. E. Maravelias Translated by K. Weber, S. Maravelias |
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