​

​

PLATONIC SOLIDS AND PHOTOGRAPHY

 

The platonic solids are the shapes of three-dimensional sculptures chosen by Denis Guzzo to embody the synthesis of his landscape projects. Within dozens or hundreds of photographs included on each research, the solids limit the photo series to a pre-defined number, creating a new and unique harmony.

 

Denis’ s work is primarily geographical, a multi layered perception of a territory, city or region. Often the research expands from specific sites, which have been studied and documented from various points of view.

 

What ones was a composition of photographs hanging next to each others has now become a new hyper-object, merging images that interact into a new and compressed form of storytelling.

 

This portfolio shows the materialization of a concept developed in 2016 with a prototype made of c-prints glued on a concrete-made Octahedron.

​

The exhibition at Studio Santa Veronica, in Torino, Italy wants to be a moment of creation and dialogue regarding this new form where visual narrative becomes spatial.

 

 

HISTORICAL NOTES

 

From Pythagoras to Kepler, from Leonardo Da Vinci to contemporary science; these geometrical forms has fascinated humanity for millennia.

Long before the Greeks, neolithic people created carved stone models of the five regular polyhedra. Carved stone spheres dating back over 4,000 years, featuring knobs and geometric symmetries resembling Platonic solids, have been discovered in Scotland.

 

The formal history is deeply tied to Greek philosophy. The Pythagoreans: Scholars trace the initial discovery of the tetrahedron, cube, and dodecahedron to Pythagoras around \(500\) BC, who called them "Perfect Solids". Theaetetus: The Athenian mathematician Theaetetus is credited with first discussing and classifying the remaining two shapes: the Octahedron and Icosahedron.

 

In 360 BC, the philosopher Plato integrated these shapes into his cosmological model in the dialogue Timaeus. He famously assigned each solid to the classical building blocks of the universe: Tetrahedron: Fire, 4 faces, Cube or Hexahedron. Earth 6 faces, the  Octahedron. Air 8 faces, the Icosahedron. Water 20  faces, the Dodecahedron. The Cosmos/Aether, 12, the Dodecahedron.

 

Around 300 BC, the mathematician Euclid compiled and systematically described the geometry of all five solids in Book XIII of Elements. He provided the definitive proof that there are exactly five regular convex polyhedra possible in three-dimensional space.

 

During the Renaissance, artists and astronomers embraced the geometric perfection of the solids. Leonardo da Vinci produced intricate drawings of the solids grouped under a body of work called 'De Divina Proportione'. In his 1596 publication Mysterium Cosmographicum, astronomer Johannes Kepler proposed a model of the solar system where the orbits of the then-known planets were nested within the five Platonic solids separated by inscribed spheres.

 

Today, scientists continue to discover that the principles of these highly symmetrical forms describe our natural world. They are found naturally in the molecular structures of microscopic crystals, the geometry of certain viruses, and in quantum chemistry.