Mathematics = Beauty?
By RACHEL JENAGARATNAM

A former Maths man has turned artist by incorporating numbers, symbols and icons for his paintings. But just how far can cold calculus and algebra be turned into heart-warming aesthetics?

Ipoh-born artist, Rajinder Singh, has a CV that speaks of nomadic, worldly endeavours, but this month sees him return to his tanah air for a second solo-exhibition at Pace Gallery in Petaling Jaya. The exhibition, Number-Trance-Face, features eight new additions to the artist’s previous series, Faces (which was an original exploration of portraits and numbers).

Subjects in both series are individuals that have played salient roles in the artist’s life. All of them are women, but these paintings resist the categorisation of traditional portraiture, which conventionally, exalts its subjects. Rajinder’s paintings, devoid of stately background, or fanciful qualities, are far more objective.

 
Does The rebellion in truth(2008) dream of the freedom of information as the old paperbound communication methods are shredded? – Images courtesy of the artist
 
Also, all his female subjects have been stripped of one of their most alluring qualities: their hair. No luscious blonde locks twirling across the canvas as in Sandro Botticelli’s Venus, or, silky long advertisement tresses present here - just straight portrayals of women’s faces against boldly coloured backgrounds looking at you (I will make you love me, 2008), upwards (The rebellion in truth, 2008), or, at each other (Aged wisdom, 2008).

By removing their most feminine quality, Rajinder has presented his subjects in a scientific, methodological manner. Isabelle (2007), a work from his first Faces series demonstrates this point well. The subject’s face has been painted green, whilst sensory features of her face – eyes, ears, and mouth – are in grey. And, if you look closely, the content of her actual face are sheer prints of numbers. Isabelle is futuristic: the numbers, or her flesh, are like digital codes of a matrix and the choice of colours speak of non-human qualities. It’s all very reminiscent of female characters from video games.

In using numbers, the artist arguably strips away the emotive quality in his subjects. Consequently, this challenges viewers’ socially formed perceptions of beauty, as we are forced to contemplate it in its most rudimentary form: devoid of embellishments or cosmetics. Are we able to abandon our predefined notions of beauty and accept Rajinder’s utilitarian portrayal instead?

In his artist’s statement, Rajinder enlightens us on the premise of both series: it stems from a quotation from Salman Rushdie’s book, Fury, where the author writes, “What is the digital equivalent of lovely, he wondered. What are the digits that encode beauty, the number-fingers that enclose, transform, transmit, decode, and somehow, in the process, fail to trap or choke the soul of it.” Rushdie’s words found particular resonance with Rajinder - a former mathematician – who subsequently asks, “How can I garner my experience of beauty and elegance in mathematics to explaining beauty in general?”

For someone with a fearful abhorrence for numbers, Rajinder’s question is puzzling: how am I possibly going to find beauty using the formulaic field of mathematics? Isn’t beauty – linked to aesthetics – contradictory to the objectivity and linearity of its scientific counterpart? Mathematics isn’t one of my strong points, but my reservations of Rajinder’s works were dumbfounded upon actually viewing them.

Whilst works from the previous series also feature in this exhibition (the Muse series from 2007, for example), it is the artist’s more recent works that stand out. Backgrounds are more vigorous, titles more imaginative, and instead of just numbers, each painting is a menagerie of symbols, icons, and lines battling for attention with the requisite central face. Arithmophobes will be delighted with the variety on display.

Subjects are now encased in a more relatable environment. Symbols, such as the pointer icon in When in doubt, fake! (2008), or the space invader and graffiti in A trivia game, flirting with absolute (2008), are references to popular culture that contextualize his subjects as products of an urban environment. Look out also for the Indian movie stars in The shabbiness of certainty (2008) or the Various facets of objectivity (2008). Both relate to old movie posters, whilst God’s collage and The rebellion in truth (2008) are reminiscent of decaying bills (advertisements for illegal money-lenders, for example) that deluge walls in urban spaces.

 
A pointer icon is incorporated into When in doubt, fake!But is it the smile or the product stamps which are phony?
 
Number-Trance-Face displays a distinctive development for the artist, as he incorporates new elements to his work: collage, a more varied palette, and the extension of numbers to include its closest relatives, symbols and icons. Visually, these works are more frenzied, mimicking the word ‘trance’ in the exhibition’s title; it conjures the image of an artist possessed by numbers, constantly adding, multiplying, and factoring.

Rajinder has found beauty in mathematics and vice versa. He says, “Art and maths are but languages through which we attempt to understand that which is ineffable.’ For me, numbers were the ineffable language too difficult to comprehend. But, seeing Rajinder’s works has occasioned a shift in my perception and taught me that – if treated as symbols – numbers translate quite beautifully. If only mathematics had been this interesting in school.
 

 CHIMERA - by artist Isabel Lofgren

I have often wondered about the so-called mirror-stage much talked about in the field of psychoanalysis, maybe Lacan, if I remember well.  It deals with some sort of primal identification of the infant with the face of the mother. Then there is the encounter of the same infant with his own mirror image, where at first glance, he does not recognize himself but rather sees the image of another person, his "otherness".

My rudimentary understanding is this: looking at a face, any face, even the face on this canvas (supposedly mine - I was the model) is the only means of understanding oneself and the surrounding world. We want to be absorbed by that other-wordliness and also find a likeness or mere identification: we need to stare at eyes staring back at us for a sense of acknowledgment. Simple.

As I confronted  these eyes on this canvas, supposedly my own gaze, I made a vain attempt to look for this mirror sensation. Yet here, I experienced a virtual encounter with what I once knew as my own face, now magnified twenty-fold, green, with a funny likeable gaze staring back at me (or at you).

The mirror, if this painting ever was one (I have my doubts), caused a discomforting encounter of the me with the I with the myself, and I erroneously embarked on a archaeological expedition through that surface digging for some kind of verissimilitude inside what was supposedly this  "other" version of me. Futile endeavor.

Impossible to grasp at a glance, one is left looking at this image in parts that constitute the whole, with eyes transfixed on the surface like a percussionist must have his ear close to the vibration of his drum. Close to that painted surface one finds the atomic substance of the smaller equations that construct the overall surface color. There is everything a small universe should contain: a stroke, numbes, a pixel, hidden meanings and spurious references - a territory to explore. This is not a surprise for a painter-cum- mathematician like Rajinder who oscillates between the logic of numbers and the logic of sensation.

There was no subliminal identification to be found there, this has nothing to do with the model, the face, or even the penetrating gaze, this is not and never was to be intended as a mirror or even metaphor, or even a portrait. That landscape of a face with its microcosms, there, that construction on that canvas on that wall in that room, is the artist's own chimera.

(I found some other thing there that was not me, something important. Something you should also be able to find, just stare back.)

signed: Isabelle.
 Isabel Löfgren is an Swedish-Brazilian artist, lecturer, researcher based in Singapore. She occasionally models for artist friends on demand.

 A writeup from Adam Gerard, Brand Champion Tiger Translate.

HEAD: PAINTED FACES

In visual artist Rajinder Singh's exploration of women's faces, beauty is more than just skin deep. By Tracy Lee-Elrick.

It's rather unsettling taking a walk through visual artist Rajinder Singh's latest collection, "Faces".

Oversized visages of bald women are painted in monochromatic tones, with eyes that stare boldly at the viewer. Are they issuing a challenge, or an invitation?

For the artist, it's probably a mixture of the two — he admits that all his life he's been drawn to, and influenced by, strong women.

The works are as much a tribute to the women who've inspired him — wife, sister, radio jock, actresses, authors — as well as his attempt to deconstruct the essence of feminine beauty.

"What is in their faces that make them such strong women? What is it that they share in the shape of their eyes, their lips, their noses?" muses the 41-year-old. "Their intelligence, their personalities, even the sound of their voices, also affect my perception of their beauty."

With five academic degrees to his name (including a PhD in Engineering Math), and a postgraduate thesis in Art Philosophy in the works, it's not surprising that Singh not so much paints what he sees, but what he thinks.

In this case, the question he poses is: " What is the numerical equivalent of loveliness?".

In Singh's opinion, there's a certain universality of beauty and it's got to do with certain proportions of the face that work better than others. "It's become an important thing in our lives today — everyone's reading magazines, obsessed with beautiful people and how to be beautiful."

Steering clear of pure portraiture, he chooses instead to produce "likenesses" in his idiosyncratic trademark style, exploring the symbiosis between math and art.

Through the years, there have always been artists that have opted for a more objective, calculated approach to art; the most famous example being Leonardo Da Vinci, who sketched the ideal human form based on precise mathematical formulas and ratios.

As for Singh, he combines abstract expressionism with automatism. Carefully placed brush strokes share canvas space with a random scattering of 'brain dumps', a term for those untidy scribbles covering an academic's whiteboard when he's trying to work out a mathematical problem.

"My finished product is not the most important thing," he explains. "It's the process, the abstract thought experiment, that takes precedence."

These planned experiments of his have resulted in paintings with layer upon layer of intrigue built right in. After the initial Pop Art shock impact of the works, smaller details begin to reveal themselves upon closer observation.

The shape and contours of each face have been created using hand-held rubber stamps featuring proprietary mathematical formulas, equations and ratios that already exist for measuring beauty, which are then smudged over.

Nonsense statistics such as "12224: the number of times you have to ask a man to replace the toilet roll" are silkscreened randomly throughout the paintings, reflecting Singh's obsession with math, as well as his off-kilter sense of humour.

There are also aerial views of Lilliputan men trudging across each woman's face, calling to mind how a beautiful woman's face is not so much her own property, but a visual landscape to be trespassed upon by her admirers, quite possibly against her knowledge or will.

Singh mentions his fascination with a concept he'd come across in Salman Rushdie's novel 'Fury'. "He talks about 'number fingers': the idea that if you scan a picture, and then email the digital image of it to someone, there are 'number fingers' taking it apart into its smallest digital components, and then reassembling it for the recipient".

Likewise, Singh considers 'Faces' to be the imperfect result of the number fingers in his brain deconstructing the faces of the women he perceives as beautiful, and then attempting to recreate their image — as coloured by his thoughts, emotions and academic background.

"My quest has been absurd, doomed from start to finish," he says. I don't think I've solved the problem I set out to explore. In mathematics, the proof is clear and incontrovertible. Beauty is something you know and recognise, but find it hard to express even though there seems to be a universal standard as to what makes a beautiful face. Maybe some day, there will be a mathematical expression for it," he surmises.

Perhaps there already is. With plastic surgery these days, everyone can be beautiful. You can consult a surgeon and he can tell you exactly, that if your eyebrows were raised by half a mm, if your eyes were that much bigger, or your nose that much smaller and higher, you would be beautiful.

"They're the messiahs of modern life, shaping the perception of beauty," Singh observes.

"But the average person's perception of beauty is quite pedestrian, it never gets taken beyond a certain level. And when everyone's outwardly beautiful thanks to plastic surgery, your perception shifts from what you can see, to also what and how you hear, smell, and feel. It's the kind of metaphysical beauty that brings tears to the eye, that touches a soul, and makes one want to be a better person. And that's what makes it so hard to quantify."

A review on the FACES series of paintings - Milenko Prvacki