The Work of Matthias Alfen: A Sculptural Journey from Existentialism to String Theory

By Dr. Howard Anton, Professor of Mathematics and Author

On viewing an Alfen sculpture one senses in his juxtaposition of concave and convex forms an antagonistic tension of opposites: time and timelessness, space and void, chaos and order, birth and death. Temporally, one sees and feels a flow of time, but cannot discern logically whether it is a flow from past to future or from future to past. It is as if the viewer is a “Janus”, looking forward and backward simultaneously, able to see a fusion of past and future. Spatially, Alfen leads us through a labyrinth of balanced positive and negative forms that are melted seamlessly into a coherent whole. Much like a relativistic physicist, he weaves time and space into an artistic universe that challenges us to study it and understand it intellectually.

Alfen credits the inspiration for his work to a fortuitous observation of a cicada emerging from its larval shell to begin its new life cycle after 15 years underground. The juxtaposition of the negative form of the hollow shell and the positive form of the emerged insect, together with their life-death symbolism, left an indelible impression on him. For Alfen this natural process has symbolic layers that he reflects in his art: the hollow shell representing the space we occupy and the brief life of the positive-form cicada representing the ephemeral human existence. He notes that this same dichotomy of shapes is evidenced in ancient Egyptian art and culture – the juxtaposition of the negative interior shape of the sarcophagus and the positive exterior shape of the mummified body are, to Alfen’s eye, analogous to the cicada and its empty shell.

Alfen’s work is more than an artistic exercise in temporal and spatial gymnastics – time and space are his tools for probing into deeper matters. One senses, for example, that his temporal-spatial amalgam is a metaphor for other things – perhaps the ephemeral human condition and the struggle to understand the nature of our universe and our being.

Sometimes he conveys that struggle in images of gut-wrenching agony (as in “Falling Man”) and sometimes in tranquil introspection (as in “Standing Female”). One senses that there is also a deeper meaning in Alfen’s antagonistic tension of opposites – perhaps the conflict between intuition and science, between art and mathematics, between matter and antimatter, or between chaos and order.

To fully appreciate the symbolic richness of Alfen’s work one must view it not only in an artistic context, but also in the framework of contemporary mathematics, physics, and philosophy. Philosophers, physicists, and artists share the common goal of describing reality – the philosopher in the medium of words, the physicist in the medium of numbers and equations, and the artist in the medium of image and metaphor.

Although one might argue that physics seeks objective reality while art originates in subjective reality, the difference is artificial since one can make the case that although abstraction transcends the “objective world” it arrives at the same reality, only along a different path. Indeed, artists have often preempted physicists by incorporating into their work descriptions of the physical world that science only later discovers to be valid.

Consider, for example, Alfen’s “Falling Man”. The work shows a man, arms outstretched, falling from one point of view and balancing from another. Artistically, one can consider this to be a temporal extension of cubism in which Alfen, in the spirit of Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase”, has skillfully manipulated time as well as view and perspective.

But surely Alfen intends that we also see the two views “relativistically” as a single event in which the man is simultaneously falling and balancing. This apparent paradox is well known to physicists who have struggled with the concept of simultaneity in their effort to explain how light can exhibit properties of waves and particles simultaneously.

The German physicist, Werner Heisenberg observed:

“Light and matter are both single entities, and the apparent duality arises in the limitations of our language.”

In “Falling Man” Alfen has managed to capture in sculptor’s language the essence of a phenomenon that, as Heisenberg observed, renders verbal description impotent.

Before considering some interpretations of Alfen’s work that fall outside the realm of physics, let me comment further on the mathematical aspect of his positive and negative forms as it relates to contemporary physics.

Euclidean geometry was developed to describe in mathematical language the three-dimensional space that we can see and measure. In the mid 19th century German mathematician Georg Riemann gave a landmark lecture on a geometry of curved space that opened the door for Albert Einstein’s four-dimensional space-time universe and ultimately for the work of today’s physicists on string theory.

The latest formulation of string theory postulates eleven space-time dimensions, seven of which are unobservable in our four-dimensional space-time universe. Thus, physicists, whose stock in trade is careful observation, have been forced to accept the “reality” of a permanently unobservable aspect of our universe. Is this what Alfen’s “Standing Female” is trying to convey? – the positive form looking out on an observable universe unaware of her unobservable counterpart embodied in negative form?

An important ingredient of string theory is “supersymmetry”, a yet unproven theory that posits the existence of an equal number of certain particles (fermions and bosons) residing in matched pairs. Should the theory be proved, then that proof will unite the four fundamental forces of nature – electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces – and that will lead to the so-called “Grand Unified Theory”, the Holy Grail that physicists have long sought. Is Alfen’s balance of positive and negative spaces a sort of supersymmetry that is still another example of artistic anticipation of a yet unproved theory of reality?

Of course, what Alfen’s work says is determined by the frame of reference in which we choose to view it, so let us consider a totally different view of the symbolism of his positive and negative spaces. For this purpose we will consider “Falling Man” from the “existential” point of view that was articulated by Jean-Paul Sartre and others.

In his 1940 work, “Being and Nothingness”, Sartre posed the question

“What is it like to be a human being?”

He then answered his own question by asserting that a human being exists both as an “object” (expressed artistically by Alfen’s positive, convex forms) and as a “consciousness” or “nothingness” (expressed by Alfen’s negative, concave forms). Consciousness, because it is nothingness, allows us to choose what we will be – it is our free will, our ability to define our lives through a series of our own choices.

These choices often create opposing outcomes. In “Falling man” Alfen shows two different scenarios. On one side the agonizing figure is falling, on the other side a seemingly calm figure maintains its equilibrium. The destiny of these two processes is again a dichotomy: “Life and Death”, or Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness”.

The Egyptian influence, alluded to earlier, is evidenced in Alfen’s “Standing Female”. This work, though more placid and introspective than “Falling Man”, shares the same philosophical foundation. The face and body are articulated in both positive and negative form. Though sharing a common body, each form neither recognizes nor dominates the other. The positive form with its timeless, monolithic quality of Egyptian statuary, conveys an individual bound by ritual, whereas the dynamic, negative form, because of its nothingness, conveys a free will that is unshackled by that ritual. What is remarkable in this piece is Alfen’s ability to bridge a time gap of 5000 years and find elements of contemporary Post Modern science and philosophy in ancient Egyptian culture.

The Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti once said:

“Art and science mean trying to understand. Failure or success plays a secondary role.”

Alfen and others have expressed the same idea another way: “Good art comes about by attempting the impossible and, though doomed to failure, the striving spawns innovation and creativity.”

We see that artistic striving in Alfen’s work. He has faced head on some of the most important questions of science, mathematics, philosophy, and contemporary art. The more the viewer allows himself or herself to be immersed in his work the more evident its depth, creativity, innovation, and uniqueness become.