Content produced for Platformart.com, 2021.

Repetition

“Repetition is a form of change.” This contradictory statement offered by the musician Brian Eno illuminates the way the brain perceives patterns. A repeating note or motif is a feature that musicians exploit in their compositions, providing a base to return to after novelty is introduced. This is how a pattern is created, through repetition and difference.  But if a note is repeated enough times, the listener may start to imagine variations within the repetition, combatting monotony. 

In the fine arts, conceptual artists of the 1970s explored similar concepts, testing the limits of repetition. For his installations, Sol Lewitt would provide a set of instructions to be executed by an art preparator, usually a simple pattern to be repeated ad infinitum. However, each iteration, depending on the site or the context, would bear out slightly different results. Likewise, in the works of Magnus Maxine, the binary grid pattern provides a solid “base,” for the eye, but human error in a hand-drawn work adds organic variation and interest, a natural pattern of sorts.  

For the artist Yayoi Kusama, excessive, obsessive repetition is her form of therapy to combat mental illness. And there is reason to believe that patterns for their own sake can have a soothing effect on the viewer; patterns are found in religious and folk cultures from all over the world, for they appeal to what can only be termed as our innate desire for repetition and difference. It is no surprise that the geometric patterns found in Islamic art are said to provide a bridge to the spiritual realm. Likewise, in Benjamin Styer’s paintings, geometric folk motifs frame his paintings, underscoring the awe of a natural landscape.  

The natural world does have its own patterns, or a “mathesis,” as suggested by the fractal geometries found in everything from cauliflower to crystals. The Los Angeles-based Joe Zorilla has charted birds in his own environment to reveal astonishing, regular patterns re-iterated through concentric circles of different sizes. The results are layered patterned compositions that provide a sense of order with occasional digressions into the realm of novelty.