The paradox of primes --their simultaneous existence as chaos and mechanism-- demonstrates that our understanding of them is a function of perspective. This paradox is important because it applies to much more than primes and, in fact, well beyond math. All knowledge and experience depends on its frame. This universal proposition becomes Macko's and Valenza's common point of departure....

 

Macko's and Valenza's various deviations from art and math leave us to wonder whether or not the break from the methodologies of a given field leads to a loss of rigor or, on the contrary, to a quantum leap beyond stagnant paradigms....Breaking with disciplinary structures is risky business, but Macko and Valenza counter with productive and imaginative leaps. Valenza recognizes the importance of inner experience that mathematical discourse does not countenance because it appears chaotic from the perspective of math. Macko acknowledges that some degree of formulaic regularity may structure what artistic discourse so often romantically relegates to the chaotic realm of the unknowable.”

(excerpted from Alison Pearlman, “From Ground Rules to Horizon Lines,” essay accompanying the Interstices exhibition at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA © 2003; Download essay)