±1.618034
Concrete, water, black paint.
Commissioned by K.A.I.R., Kamiyama, Tokushima Prefecture, Japan.
Souzou no mori, Fureai Park, Kamiyama, Japan, 2004.
±1.618034 is a permanent sculpture installation located in the Souzou no Mori, Fureai Park, on the outskirts of Kamiyama. In this work utilising concrete and water, perhaps more than in the others of the series, one sees the return of the architect-builder in the artist’s work. Consisting of a cut-out cast-concrete logarithmic spiral platform containing water, and based on the Fibonacci Series, the prime function of this creative piece is to enable the spectator to equate its man-made geometry to the natural landscape of the site. Primarily an art work which incorporates nature into its surroundings, it also allows one to reflect on the hidden order of number, inherent in the generating grammar of its form. Specifically site-oriented, it also provides viewers with reflected images of Kamiyama’s "God’s Mountain". Because of its black-tinted reflective water surfaces, the piece brings into play not only the location, but also the people who visit it. Shinto-oriented in terms of its relationship to nature and place, it remains however a work which emanates from the essence of its mathematical proportions. Its beauty is realised through the harmony of Phi, and the aesthetic order and elegance it constantly generates and displays. Here Attard establishes a bridge between earth, sky, man and nature, and also a geographical connection between the isle of his origins and the site-specificity of the works location. This "spiral mirabilis" hints to its spectators, answers to man's ever enigmatic question of "where do we come from and where are we going?" With its water glimmering mirror surfaces evoking Ovid's Metamorphoses myth of Narcissus, the installation provides an inverted variety of static and kinetic symmetrical connotations, recalling the artist's 2003 Malta installation "Salina’s Lament", where the dialectics of image and reality were also expressed in profound poetic intensity. Attard's doubling of the real with the reflected in a Japanese setting provides a reference to the mirror, an important mythological symbol in the country's folklore, while also recalling mirror myths relating to the sun goddess Amaterasu.