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The significance of the circle to both structure and content can be observed throughout history and art. The circular form is the most common structure found in nature and symbolizes life itself by representing the earth, the sun, the moon as well as every cell in our body. Modern artists have utilized the circle in such accomplishments as Robert Delaunay’s Sun Disks, Jasper John’s Target with Four Faces, and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, as well as in the circular vignettes Emmit Gowin incorporated in his early photographic work.

Circles, known as Mandalas, are believed to possess spiritual significance that often represent the center of personality and therefore symbolize the self. Erf’s emblematic circles, like wheels of fortune, generate interplay among his strong geometric compositions that contain the seeds about how we can view the world, and where we decide to stop the spinning wheel establishes our relationship with the world.

We know our world and the art within it by constructing patterns from the continuous flow of data that is filtered and interpreted by our individual senses and experiences. A single fixed view limits ones perception to a narrow slit of time as if acquired from the perspective of a cyclops. Erf’s hand varnishing method allows his multi-faceted prints to be closely inspected without the interference of glass, inviting an intimate visual connection between us and his dynamic multiple moments that urges us to see further and question more.

 

Robert Hirsch