Xylor Jane “Counterclockwise"

Xylor Jane’s hypnotic paintings are rooted in mathematical concepts, numerology, and love. Devotional portraits of gridded Arabic numerals hold personal significance to the artist but are intended to spark a spell-like visceral experience for the viewer. The subjects include tetradic primes, Fibonacci sequences, and Magic Squares. The colors emerge from a seven-hue system that holds space for our curiosity, despair, and aspiration.

Xylor Jane “…has integrated pure mathematics and optics into a domain of metaphysical wonderment at once exhilarating and disturbing. The experience of looking at a painting by Jane is like riding a roller coaster — enlivening and alarming, pleasurable and puzzling. The lattermost is essential, because Jane is clearly delighted by the puzzles that are integral to pure mathematics. The dots of color evoke analogies with pixels, particles, and the dust of which we are made, and to which we will all return. And despite this awareness of the finality of our obliteration, she celebrates the mystery of things with unrivaled intensity.” — John Yau.

Words and images via UMASS Amherst