First made in collaboration with Ceramica Suro, Guadalajara, Mexico for: Everything Must Go! at Casey Kaplan, NYC (June 30 – July 30, 2011) these objects were also a part of PALOMAR at Laure Genillard Gallery, London in 2016.
(Not)Turtles
In 2006 Hungarian mathematicians Gábor Domokos and Péter L. Várkonyi proved the possibility of “a convex three-dimensional homogeneous body which, when resting on a flat surface, has just one stable and one unstable point of equilibrium.” They named such forms Gömböc, after a sweet Hungarian dumpling. Gömböc are self-righting: they will roll as if possessed before coming to rest on one precise point.
In 2007 the same mathematicians authored a paper examining the surprising similarity between Gömböc and certain turtle species. By providing turtles with a shaped shell that allows them to avoid the certain death that finding themselves on their backs would portend, evolution had anticipated the Gömböc by millennia.
Later that year the Gömböc-Shop.com was launched, offering authentic forms for purchase. Only proof that Gömböc exist has been published, not the precise geometry that allows them to be produced.
Domokos and Várkonyi had discovered not only the solution to an abstract mathematical puzzle and an insight into a natural form, but also the answer to an age-old artistic question. Namely, how do you make three-dimensional multiples for which each object can only be displayed a single way?
While not being turtles, (Not)Turtles are certainly not Gömböc.