Irene Rousseau
" Hyperbolic Diminution-Blue "
Glass mosaic. Size: 23 1/2" diameter, 3" depth. 2003.
" Hyperbolic Diminution-Blue "
Painting. Size: 17 1/2" diameter. 2003.
Irene Rousseau is an artist and art historian residing in Summit, New Jersey. More than 15 prominent museums around the world have Dr. Rousseau's work in their collection. They include the National Museum of Contemporary Art of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC ; Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim and the Whitney Museum in New York; The British Museum, London; National Gallery of Art, Rome and MAMCO the Contemporary Museum of Fine Art, Geneva. She received the AIA/NJ presentation award. Dr. Rousseau attended Claremont Graduate University, California and received a Master of Fine Arts degree and New York University where she received a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies.
Her work differs from many mosaic artists in that she features multi-dimensional sculptures resulting in curved concave surfaces. By using mathematical concepts the tessellated mosaic surface of reflective points of light seem to defy the material substance. The hyperbolic sculptures seem to "float" on the wall. Her commissioned sculptures and murals include architectural interiors and exteriors. She is listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in American Art.
Hyperbolic Mosaic Sculptures and Paintings
"As an artist and non-mathematician my artwork originates with the aesthetic intuition of geometric form, which bears a mathematical coherence found in the natural world. When we look at nature we see patterns. Patterns are my metaphor for the structure and the hidden formal order of spatial systems that occur in nature. My sculptures are constructed using tessellated patterns made of mosaics. The units or tesserae are pieced together on a three dimensional surface which has negative curvature and is inspired by hyperbolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry is the counterpart of Euclidean geometry. Unlike the Euclidean plane, which is infinite, a hyperbolic plane has finite structures with boundaries.
"My paintings are made of patterns using colored pigments on a two dimensional plane. They are represented as points on a circular disc with hyperbolic distances defined. Some of my paintings are composed of intermingling colored dots which create the illusion of a layered three-dimensional geometric space. In my hyperbolic sculptures and paintings, repeating patterns and regular and semi-regular tessellations, decrease in size at the bounding edge, and metaphorically represent infinity. The surface is composed of tiling patterns, which have symmetry of design. It is a transformation that preserves the distance. One becomes aware of the energy and time expended in cutting and piecing together the tiling patterns to create the mosaic sculptures or the process of painting each unit from point to segment, to shape.
"My tessellated sculptures and paintings is my vehicle for expressing the rhythms and energies "found in the universe". Using an artistic license they metaphorically represent the concept of infinite smallness within a finite structure."
Irene may be contacted at:
mosaicartforms@comcast.net
tel. 908 -273-7394