Black Velvet Lips

Concept

Fibonacci Ellipses

The Fibonacci Ellipses collection shows arrangements of ellipses whose minor axis (height) and major axis (width) are two consecutive Fibonacci numbers. The length of the large main axis of an ellipse becomes the length of the small main axis of the following ellipse. From the property of the Fibonacci numbers it follows that the major main axis of the following ellipse is the sum of the major and minor main axes of the previous ellipse.

With Black Velvet Lips, the black pigment color is so intense that, in combination with the Hahnemühle William Turner paper, it gives the impression of a covering of fine velvet. Light that hits the ellipses is completely swallowed up. This “lack of light”, paired with the pointed white spots between the circles, plays with the eye of the beholder in a confusing way. If you look at the ellipses for a long time, the impression of horizontal circles is just as confusing.

Arrangement

The smallest ellipse is a 1×1 circle and has been colored red as the origin of the image. It symbolizes the Big Bang, or seen from the other side, the “red” hole. Starting from the first ellipse, the following ellipses are alternately rotated by +/-90º. The large / small main axis equality of consecutive ellipses becomes visible. After the first two, each ellipse touches exactly four neighboring ellipses: on the one hand it touches the two ellipses from whose sum it was formed, and on the other hand the two ellipses to whose size it contributes as part of the sum. The last two truncated ellipses indicate the infinity of the Fibonacci sequence.