Vita

Capturing a moment of beauty in a photograph was something Arno Solaire experienced as a young man with analog cameras — and grew through.

After many years of photography, he turned to acrylic painting in 2012 and explored various techniques. He greatly enjoyed coloring larger canvases using the palette knife technique.

He also created beautiful works on canvases primed with marble powder and using scratching techniques. The exposed contours emerged in absolute calm and then from a spontaneous impulse: a few, very simple lines forming archetypal patterns. No explanation is required here — the impact arises from this simple form manifesting from a deep inner level. Retouching photo canvas prints with acrylics also produced interesting results.

In his high school diploma, Arno Solaire chose art and mathematics as exam subjects. He used the pandemic period to study number theory intensively — resulting in something entirely new since October 2022.

Quote from the artist:

“Most people have an aversion to mathematics. Yet everything we see — stars, crystals, atoms, living beings, plants — has an inner beauty, clarity, and structure. Their harmonious relationships, distances, and shapes can be precisely described with numbers. Mathematics is the queen of the sciences that the others need and use as a tool.

A number is abstract and consists of digits. There are special numbers, such as primes or squares, that number lovers find beautiful.

By a happy ‘coincidence’ I discovered a method to transform a number into a unique graphical representation. This makes the information and beauty inherent in a number visible — assigning a form to the number.

The fascinating aspect is that this graphic represents the number exactly. It is not a product of chance, but a unique representation of that number. This line graphic for this number exists only once.

We use base 10 with digits 0..9; the algorithm also allows other bases with fewer or more digits, e.g., binary (0..1) or octal (0..7). If we omitted digits (0..9), the graphics would be a new way of representing numbers — without digits but as images.

It is my pleasure to use this method to build a bridge between art and mathematics and bring the beauty of numbers to people who have no access to them through digits — via colorful works of art.

If you didn’t like your math teacher or don’t feel close to numbers, simply enjoy the colors and harmony — the cosmic, universal sound of these visualizations.”