AN ARTIST IN SEARCH OF INFINITY PERFECTED IN HYPER-DIMENSIONAL FORM
RICHARD X ZAWITZ
“Nothing
is out of the question the way I live my life. I’m always thinking about creating my future starts when I wake up. Every morning that’s when it starts.... When I wake up and see the first light Then I’m grateful....”
-Miles Davis 1926 - 1991
Since the 1960s my work has been devoted to exploring the energy and principles of Chinese Taoism and the alchemical pantheon of Asian philosophy and metaphysics. Specifically, the essential nature and relationships between form and formlessness. I had the good fortune of being born in the era of the mindfreedom revolution and the counterculture movements of the mid 1960s, which matched my innate interests as an aspiring artist. During this time, I learned new philosophies while un-learning western biases related to aesthetics and the arts. It was a once-ina-lifetime transformational period and I’ve carried the benefit of that experience with me ever since.
I believe there are key periods in an artist’s life that are influential in the shaping of their life and work, just as there are key periods in history that are influential in shaping cultures and civilizations. In 1972 I graduated from art school. My mentor, the esteemed Indian Scholar and Professor Prithwish Neogy, recommended that I go to Japan to study with his friend, the renowned Zen Painter Morita Shiryu, and with the local artists who carved Buddha sculptures from wood. I spent one year in Kyoto which, at that time, was a crossroads of creativity – a place where Westerners like me could meet and embrace the essential energies of the East. My studies and experiences led me to hypothesize the existence of one essential particle of matter, which in turn led to my discovery of the “Tangle Particle”. The “Tangle Particle” is a part of every sculpture I make and can also be applied to functional things like lamps, toys, stereo speakers and sculpture-as-furniture. It manifests itself as a spiral, wave, curve, circle or arc. In nature and science, it is found in galaxies, proteins, light and sound waves, hurricanes, cyclones, the growth patterns of all kinds of fauna and flora and in every culture’s art and design. Think of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” and “Starry Night” for example, or textile designs with knots, curves, spirals, waves and circles in their patterns. Make your own observations, you will be amazed.
The images you see in this book are my Tao. My Tao manifests its oneness through the multiplicity of entities that I have created, and which (I believe) have in some small way benefitted humanity. Wherever these works are placed, I can promise an emission of positive energy into the environment. I don’t think it is enough to just displace space with an artwork, instead one must strive to really reach people. In a world of negativity, I try to incite happiness and wellbeing – I’m on a mission to create more peace and creativity.
In this book you will see examples of work from every period of my life. “Alien Buddha” (1997-2004), for instance, is a sculpture made with stone, wood and stainless-steel. It took a painstakingly long time to make but was, as a result, more rewarding to complete. The stone I used is called Picasso Marble which is extremely hard and contains curving streaks that show up in surprising ways during the carving process. My later sculptures include “Infinity 634”, a site-specific work commissioned in 2009 by the JW Marriott Hotel in Hong Kong. The sculpture, in combination with the surrounding elements of the lobby –glass, water, wood, stone, plants and people – helps to create an environment of positive energy. As a sculptor, my job is to find and depict images in much the same way that a painter builds an Artist Statement
image using line and tone. But I am also a “plus-ist”, and therefore I’m drawn to the three-dimensional. I choose sculpture as the medium with which to fulfill my goals and my creative expression.
I also manifest peace and creativity through my company Tangle Creations. To date, I’ve sold more than 150 million copyrighted editions of my small sculpture called “Tangle®”. More than an artwork, it’s used for everything from play to therapy to education, as well as offering pure aesthetic pleasure. Also, my series of Infinity sculptures are large-scale stainless-steel works that combine additional materials such as crystals and synthetic textures in an attempt to represent the Tao in a three-dimensionalplus form. I think people engage with these works through both their visual elegance and their unseen energy. My practice also includes creating digital renderings of sculptures in architectural scale. The renderings help me visualize how my public work will appear in a variety of environments and helps me stretch the limitations of my imagination and materials. As always, my goal is to enhance the environment in which they’re placed by generating a generous flow of positive energy.
My practice is based on the relationship between the three realms of human experience – the physical, the intellectual and the spiritual. These realms are experienced in the world as actions, ideas and feelings which come together via the body, mind and spirit. It is the combination of all three that gives us the capacity to believe, to reason and to create. The traditional hierarchy of human needs is based on physiological safety, love and belonging, and esteem and self-actualization in an ascending order. I believe that creativity, and the drive to fulfill our unique and individual potential, is also a basic need that must be met, or it will result in an imbalance. I see this lack of balance in global affairs and our culture’s general shift towards negativity – the need to create, and facilitate creativity is greater than ever before.
I wish everyone who reads this book creativity and wellness and I invite you to project that creativity both outward and inward.
Very Sincerely,
THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
“I am attracted to things that encapsulate hardness and durability.
So, there was a natural inclination for me to turn towards steel...
I love stainless steel.
I love its timelessness.”
The
Philosopher’s
Stone: Magic in the Materials
Richard was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1946. Pittsburgh, with its easily navigable waterways and coveted resources including coal, timber, natural gas, iron and limestone, supported the growth of the then blossoming 19th century USA. In 1901 Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie (founder of Richard’s favourite childhood museum, The Carnegie Museuvm of Art) and Henry Clay Frick (grandson of Western Pennsylvania Whiskey Distillers) came together over a material that would prove to be one of the most valuable resources of all time – steel. Using coal as the basis for production, they joined forces to form The Carnegie Steel Company. This was the beginning of Pittsburgh’s reputation as a leader in steel manufacturing, and the beginning of an industry that would produce an abundance of Richard’s preferred sculptural material.
At first sight, the manufacturing of steel seems like a highly industrial, mechanical process. First, coal is fed into beehive-shaped ovens where it is transformed into “coke” via oxidization and extremely high temperatures. The steel manufacturing process is interesting because it aligns with Richard’s creative practice – both exemplify alchemy in its simplest form. Alchemy is an ancient practice involving the transformation of basic matter (such as metal) into other substances. One of the goals of traditional alchemists was to reach higher spiritual realms via the transformation of common materials into magical or more valuable materials. Making steel is an alchemical process because coal becomes “coke”, “coke” becomes steel and steel becomes buildings, cars, bridges and artwork.
Top Richard’s Early Craving Bottom Torso 2007 Right Infinite Child 2012
Perhaps it was the transformative power of steel that first caught Richard’s attention during his formative art education. As a student, he could be found scavenging steel scraps from massive metal yards in his hometown, later welding them together to make the first of his curvilinear sculptures. In addition to its availability, wideapplication and enduring strength, Richard intuited a special, alchemic quality in the material, reachable only through his intuition and creative spiritual investigation.
To this day, Richard channels this hermetic energy to construct steel sculptures that transcend the nature of the material and take on qualities of binary opposites – his work appears both hard and supple, solid and ephemeral, static and moving. Richard’s sculptures evoke natural forms like water, clouds, and snakes while investigating the powerful relationship between form and space. In this way Richard works like an alchemist, transforming functional everyday materials into engaging sculptural experiences.
The work titled “Infinity Renaissance” (2003) is just one of many sculptures in Richard’s try to masterfully manipulate steel.
In this work, Richard somehow captures the temporary and the fluid. “Infinity Renaissance” exhibits continuous undulations, curving over and under itself without friction or inertia. Standing ten feet high, the monumental sculpture is composed of robust metal lines floating in space. They appear to move endlessly in outward succession like smoke or ripples of water. This continual motion illustrates the artist’s attitude towards life – “I don’t fear change” – while the sculpture’s unique modular structure symbolizes the idea of infinity itself and its endless possibilities.
Adding chromium, Richard’s favourite alchemical “elixir”, he creates a stainless-steel finish and induces a chemical-spiritual reaction. The result is a familiar and yet captivating, perfectly polished surface that reflects viewers in time and space.
In Richard’s world, the corrosive salts, alums and chlorides usually found in an alchemist’s cupboard, are replaced with Swarovski crystals, powder coatings, paint, various kinds of rubber, resins and polymers. These materials (and more) come together in the sculpture titled “Infinite Touch” (2012), which exhibits an explosion of surface treatments and textures.
To make the work, Richard selected the most sensuous, strange and potent materials in an attempt to create a compelling experience. Running a hand over its twists and curves produces a confounding experience of visuality and tactility – simultaneously rigid, silky, bumpy, flexible, smooth and spiky – blue, red, yellow and metallic – to name only a few. But this sculpture is no anomaly, just one of several works that evidences the artist’s capacity for curiosity and experimentation. Richard refuses to limit himself to steel and stainless steel, or even the multitude of materials included in “Infinite Touch” – he also uses wood, stone, iron, bronze, silver and titanium.
Stone
Over Matter Alabaster
Richard’s capacity to manipulate challenging materials was evident in his earliest works made of wood and stone. Wood provided Richard with the symbolic energy (the tree of life) he needed to represent his most important ideas and develop his sense of spirituality. Over the years Richard has used teak, koa, Japanese cypress, rosewood, walnut, oak and elm in addition to found wood. In 1975 he created the first version of what is now his most famous sculptures, “The Tangle”®, using walnut. He called “Infinite Column”. For Richard, using wood is a way to reveal the inherent energy of a sentient living thing and illustrate timelessness via the tree’s archetypal meaning. But rather than plan out the form via sketches or plotting, he uses a method he refers to as “direct carving”. He relies on his intuition, he “knows something is in there” and begins to carve without hesitation.
In earlier works such as “Daruma Torso” (1972), “Guardian Figure Bust” (1973) and “India” (1971) Richard used stone to represent significant spiritual leaders who transformed the world via Eastern Philosophy. Later, still enraptured by the transformative qualities of carved stone, Richard turned to alabaster, granite, onyx and marble to investigate the idea of energetic vibrancy.
“Cosmic Stone”, for example, is made of alabaster and features bulbous forms with animistic qualities. Its extravagant bulges and cell-like shapes are like the natural and yet strange images found in the art historical period of the traditional grotesque where textures and colours are excessive, overlapping and exaggerated. Similarly, Richard’s sculpture “Mind Over Matter”, also carved from alabaster, features
repetitive curves, protuberances and globular forms. Via the abundance of a variety of orbicular shapes, which in some areas take on a rope-like pattern, these sculptures exude the visceral softness of human anatomy. Here stone becomes an outward manifestation of inner exuberance, an energetic froth.
Even though Richard is passionate about exploring materials and three-dimensional form, sculpture itself is not the focus of his creative mission. Richard is in pursuit of the Philosopher’s Stone. The Philosopher’s Stone, in Western alchemy, is an unknown substance sought by alchemists for its perceived ability to transform base materials into something precious. “…the philosopher’s stone was thought to cure illnesses, prolong life, and bring about spiritual revitalization.” Like steel, stone and wood, The Philosopher’s Stone was sometimes said to be a common substance, found everywhere but unrecognized and unappreciated by most. “This endless quest fuelled alchemists from the Middle Ages to the end of the 17th century to seek out and experiment with numerous substances and their interactions.”
Richard, as an artist-philosopher-inventor, believes creativity is his Philosopher’s Stone, and he uses it to transform ideas, materials and space into vehicles for peace. Just as steel, with its versatile application and lucrative industry revolutionized Pittsburgh and altered millions of lives via employment, commerce, engineering and architecture, Richard used steel to transform himself into a magician (of sorts). In turn, he now makes sculpture as a thaumaturgist might, with the intention of transforming people’s lives via art and creativity.
“In the Zen Buddhist tradition that I embrace, I believe in the rule of ‘no rule’. My professor Prithwish Neogytaught me something that I have never stopped living –life is not a matter of either/or, it is both/and. I have never eliminated any possibilities. There is no reason to, why should I?”
“The Way”
In 1968 Richard enrolled in the fine art program at The University of Pittsburgh. Later, in 1969, he transferred to The University of Hawaii where he earned a major in Fine Art/Sculpture and a double minor in Asian Art History and Asian Philosophy. In Hawaii he began a two-year mentorship with Prithwish Neogy, Professor Emeritus of South Asian Art History and lauded pioneer of transdisciplinary pedagogy. During this time, Richard studied the writing of Jacques Maritain, Sigfried Giedion and Ananda Coomaraswamy – Neogy’s mentor.
In Ananda Coomaraswamy’s essay, “The Theory of Art in Asia”, he addressed symbolism and convention, originality and novelty, intensity and energy in relation to art. He cited Rasa, a philosophy of art experience, as a leading principle in Indian art. In Sanskrit, Rasa refers to the sap or juice of plants but in an art context it’s understood as a state of “heightened delight” created in the viewer while experiencing an artwork.
“Wherever one of my artworks is placed, I can guarantee an impact of positive energy.”
The theory of Rasa is attributed to Bharata Muni, a sage-priest who lived between the 1st century BCE and the 3rd century CE. Later, Abhinavagupta (c. 1000) developed the theory further and applied it to all varieties of artwork.
According to the theory of Rasa, entertainment is a desired effect but not the primary goal of art. The focus is to transport the individual “into another parallel reality, full of wonder and bliss, where he experiences his own consciousness and can reflect on spiritual and moral questions. Rasa can provide relief for those exhausted by labour, distraught with grief, laden with misery or struck by austere times.” It was believed that those sensitive enough to experience Rasa, a “sahrdaya”, were receiving rewards for their merit in a previous incarnation.
Richard believes in the principle of Rasa and sees it as an essential part of his creative practice. Although entertainment is a motivating factor, he is dedicated to making artwork that generates positive energy, and to using his intuition to create meaningful work that expresses his spiritual beliefs.
While a student at The University of Pittsburgh, Richard audited a class lead by Chinese master Wing Tsit Chan. It was through this course that Richard learned the fundamentals of Taoism which would become his lifelong personal and creative path. Chan’s course included teachings on The Tao, or The Way. The Tao is a series of practices through which a person can come into synchronicity with the rhythms and cycles of nature, attain spiritual insight and ultimately come to peace with one’s
existence. An important aspect of Tao is a state of perpetual motion. “All things, as they come into being and develop, progress through a series of changes moving persistently to return to the state of non-being, the primal unity and source of all things.” Richard’s personal and creative philosophy, and even the structure of his sculptures, reflect this state of constant change, evolution, and fluidity.
The Chinese character for Tao combines the character “ch’o”, represented by a foot taking a step or moving step by step, and the character “shou”, represented by a head. (insert pic of Chinese character) This symbolizes the idea of Tao as both continually moving and unmoving. The Tao is a path that lies motionless on the ground and yet leads onward, and is therefore always and simultaneously in and out of action. This is also the basis for the Taoist principle, “Wu Wei”. Directly translated, it means “inaction” but in Taoism means “pure effectiveness”. Richard’s practice focuses on the continual (re)discovery of the present moment by harnessing the energy of “Wu Wei” while also practicing the art of spontaneity, or what in Taoism is called, Tzu-jan.
“My art practice is intuitive. I still, to this day, practice an ancient Chinese exercise from Taoism
called Tzu-jan, or spontaneity. This is both a belief system and a methodology. I believe, to be a true creative, you can’t be on a fixed path… The great Chinese painters all employed Tzu-jan. If something dripped, that was not a setback but something that was worked with. Spontaneity allows other multiple relations to happen, in a Jungian synchronistic kind of way rather than a linear way. When you allow these spontaneous moments to happen, so many other things can happen – your life becomes open ended. Tzu-jan allows anything to happen.”
While Taoism offered Richard a path to inner and outer harmony, his introduction to Zen invigorated his mind. Zen, a distinct school of Chinese Buddhism, is a philosophical-spiritual practice of non-linear, paradoxical ruling. It is both everything and nothing, personal and universal, active and passive. Offering no single dogma or approach, it instead suggests a personal relationship with one’s own mind. It could be said that Zen taught Richard what not to think, encouraging him to break through conventional thinking and behavior, and develop an expansive worldview. This bold philosophy appealed to the artist as he describes himself as a rebel, he “doesn’t play by the rules.
“My travels in Asia still inspire.”
Thanks to his non-Western education and travel, Richard felt more comfortable taking risks and was able to let go of the need for Western linearity and strict binary thinking. By studying Asian art and philosophy, he developed his own unique sense of pluralism, heightened by the powerful symbolism inherent within the Indian philosophy of Rasa, Chinese Taoism and Zen-Buddhist Philosophy. These ideas unite in Richard’s practice as a complex, poetic understanding of the human condition, art and creativity.
After graduating from The University of Hawaii in 1972, Richard travelled to Hong Kong. One month later he moved to Kyoto to live and work as a sculptor. It was here that he began working with Morita Shiryu, master Japanese calligrapher. Morita theorized calligraphy as having three properties, time (the creation of a work with the brush), space (the formal qualities of composition and line) and literary value (the moji or the word). After his training with Morita, Richard traveled extensively throughout Asia including Thailand, Nepal, Tibet and Indonesia. During this time, he was fascinated by the complex symbols and imagery found in Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu and Zen temples, artifacts and religious icons. For him these were more than just images and objects, they were sentient. Their symbolism influenced Richard’s then-developing theory of Curvism which he began investigating in school. Richard’s travel experiences were also integral to the development of his signature creative style, and tantamount to the creative-spiritual person he is today. In 1975 Richard returned to America and a built a studio in Waltham, Massachusetts. He worked to unite his studies, travel experiences and influences via three-dimensional sculptures and, what he now calls a “four-dimensional” energy form. After five years of experimentation he returned to Hong Kong to work with a mold maker on the creation of a prototype for what would be his most commercially successful sculpture, “The Tangle”®.
With a prolific body of work that includes visual art as well as furniture, fashion and industrial design, Richard crisscrosses disciplines guided by a deep curiosity for how imagination, manifested through material, can transform human lives. Although the function, context and materials may change from sculpture to sculpture, he is an artist that stays the course. His work investigates the dynamic relationship between three-dimensional form and the human spirit, moving towards new methods of perception and new ways to embrace creativity. The artist’s essential question remains, “Why are we here?” and his answer is always the same – “Creativity.”
“It
is the reverse evolution from the complex to the simple, the simplicity of primal unity and the transcending of the complex, the superficiality of things, that the artist of Tao searches for.”
“I practice open ended creativity. I don’t have a point or a goal. I don’t set a goal for the reative aspects of what I do.
By being able to open certian doors at certain times you realize that there is more to life than what you see.”
Influential texts read by Zawitz during his education 1969-1973
Pages from Zawitz’s early sketchbooks
The University of Hawaii, 1971
Poem analysis, ‘The Wild Geese’ by Richard X
The University of Hawaii, 1972
Zawitz
Excerpts from Richard X Zawitz’s Senior Thesis Paper
The University of Hawaii, 1972
“Nothing is out of the question, the way I live my life. I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning, that’s when it starts...”
Miles Davies
During the 1960s Richard was moved by the boundary-breaking, experimental rock and jazz music of the period. He continues to listen to jazz, especially the inimitable Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix. Richard feels an affinity with the musicians as he lives a life of “constant approach” meaning that all of his energy is put towards creativity. From the moment he wakes up in the morning, Richard propels himself toward a life without creative bounds.
“If I’m free, it’s because I’m always running.” Jimi Hendrix
THE INFINITE
“Infinity came to me through the study of Chinese Philosophy, Taoism, Zen, Buddhism, Tantra and what I understood to be metaphysical, spiritual concepts –mystical concepts that I started to absorb during my university days in Hawaii then through the use of hallucinogenics.
Right Infinity Keystone Cosmic Black 2017
I felt something that might resemble infinity. I felt something like transcending matter, and time and space.
“As an artist I was always trying to three dimensionalize that feeling. I try to never forget that experience.”
The Shape of Infinity
For human beings in a finite world, the idea of the infinite represents an opportunity to engage with immortality and the deep unknown. The inherent mystery of infinity makes it rich territory for artists interested in ideas related to life/death cycles and the relationship between form and formlessness, time and space. Yayoi Kusama is perhaps the most famous artist working with concepts of the infinite, and one with whom Richard has found deep resonance. Both artists attempt to translate the complex idea of infinity into their own visual language, rendering visible the connection between spiritual, material and natural realms.
Richard’s practice embodies the cyclical nature of infinity as he continually constructs, de-constructs and re-constructs his motifs, re-employing the same materials and forms throughout the course of his oeuvre. When Richard discovered the inherent power of the infinite represented by the circles and curvilinear shapes found in the temples, spiritual icons and religious objects of Buddhism, Zen, Hinduism, and Taoism, he immediately integrated the symbol into his work. As a mature artist, circles, waves, and spirals continue to appear in his increasingly more refined, polished and larger sculptures. Illustrated best by a recent sculpture titled Infinite Keystone, 2018, Richard’s interest in continuity is evidenced via bold lines that undulate and overlap in seemingly endless formations. The spiraling curvilinear shapes reference fleeting natural forms like billowing smoke, which stands in stark contrast to the hardness of the carved “cosmic-black” Italian granite. Richard describes the work, “Through the undulating forms and magnificent unintended patterns, which are the result of random minerals coalescing simultaneously in the matrix of the mountains and strata, a painting created by nature occurs on every twist and turn of the stone. This, to the artist, is the essence or key to a work of art – its natural ability to emit a response.”
Reaching the Infinite
In 1939 Yayoi Kusama made the first of what would come to be known as an “infinity net painting”. The drawing depicts an image of a Japanese woman in a kimono, presumed to be the artist’s mother, covered by overlapping countless flowers. These early drawings were constructed after she experienced several child-hood hallucinations featuring talking flowers and animated fabric patterns that multiplied and engulfed her (a process she now calls “self-obliteration”). The drawings were also inspired by her fixation on the image of millions of stones (think circles or dots) covering the bed of the river near her family home. Kusama describes her hallucinations,
… I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth… and when I looked up, I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows, and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space and be reduced to nothingness. As I realized it was actually happening and not just in my imagination, I was frightened… I ran desperately up the stairs. The steps below me began to fall apart and I fell down the stairs straining my ankle.
Born March 22nd, 1929, in Matsumoto Nagano prefecture, Kusama studied traditional Japanese painting at The Kyoto School of Arts and Crafts but was more interested in American Abstract Impressionism. And so, with very limited English, she followed her dream and moved to New York City in 1957 with only a couple of hundred-dollar bills sewn into her kimono and a few drawings to sell. Embracing sixties hippie culture, she gained public attention when she organized a series of “happenings” involving nude and dancing participants painted with brightly coloured dots. “A polka dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the whole world and our living life… Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing… Polka dots are a way to infinity.”
Kusama’s first professional series of “Infinity Net” paintings emerged from an earlier body of watercolours titled “Pacific Ocean”, which she made in response to seeing the movement of waves on the ocean during her first flight from Tokyo to New York. The “nets” were painted using impasto in a repetitive gesture, resulting in little loops like interlocking scales. Later, the “nets” became tiny circles or polka-dots, a form she soon became synonymous with as she continued to construct larger-scale paintings, sculptures and immersive installations entirely composed of the playful and yet poignant form.
In 1975 Richard made an artwork titled “Infinite Column”, which became the form to represent his entire creative motif – the spiral, the curve, the wave. In this sculpture two long wooden threads weave in and over each other forming a simple braid, like two singular snakes joining in a mating dance. Akin to the Caduceus (a winged staff entwined with two snakes) a symbol long used for medicine, “Infinite Column” and its sensuous repeating curves was fascinating to its audience. Its success illustrated Richard’s idea regarding the magnetic power of the curve. Shortly after, he created a complex sculptural line without beginning or end that was solid and supple, immutable and yet capable of constant movement. He called it “Statue of Infinity”. It was this early work comprising of a series of linked quarter-round curves, each twistable around a central axis, that became his most famous artwork, “The Tangle”®.
Right Tangle Creations Museum Chrome
Below Infinite Column 1975
Adapted from “The Tangle”® series, Richard’s Infinity sculptures are “Tangles”® made in colossal scale. Infinity sculptures are constructed using mirrored stainless steel, stone, plastics and/or bronze – often with lustrous powder coatings and/or ornately textured surfaces. Just as Kusama’s polka-dots act as a thread connecting her paintings, sculptures, and immersive installations, a single three-dimensional curved line comprises the entirety of Richard’s infinity works. These sculptures have, as its elemental structure, a continuous loop of tubing that crosses over, in, around, between and under without interruption. As a result, they defy a singular form or meaning suggesting instead an endless array of shapes – from the abstract and symbolic to the anthropomorphic. Like the “Tangle”® series, Infinity sculptures cultivate an opportunity to engage with the idea of boundless time and space – conceptually, physically and visually – via material form. Inspired by ancient designs like The Tibetan Knot or The Ouroboros, which portray continuous knots, loops and rings, Richard’s infinity sculptures connect to timeless concepts of unity, connection and spirit.complexity.
In the work titled “Infinite Flying Dragon”, Richard takes the idea of the infinite to new levels of complexity. In this sculpture horizontal stainless-steel lines intertwine to form spirals, coils, convolutions and curves that overlap in endless contortions – like a self-proliferating figure eight. As the title indicates, the sculpture references both the ever-changing nature of a cloud and the power of a dragon, imagery indicative of Richard’s early interest in Asian philosophy and mythology. (A fascination that Richard entertains today through his extensive ongoing collection of dragon sculptures, objects and imagery.)
“Infinite Flying Dragon Cloud” relays venerable motifs connected to nature and the symbol of the dragon in Chinese culture – water, power, strength and good fortune.
Flying Dragron
In the work titled, “Alien Green DNA”, Richard pairs his signature curve-line with Kusama’s polka dot. Mounted on three steel posts, “Alien Green DNA” shifts from green tubular forms with black bumps, to black tubular forms with green bumps. The protuberances, varying in size and placement, emphasize the curves in the sinuous structure of the sculpture, similar to the way Kusama’s polka dots create a sense of distance, continuation and expansion. In both artists’ work, the dot or the bump establishes a relationship to the cosmological and to uninterrupted, multi-directional expansion. In Richard’s sculpture, the small lumps consume the form while simultaneously the audience becomes absorbed in an unknowable experience – how do we interpret the finite nature of materials when they are presented in a seemingly infinite way?
The Space of Infinity
In 1963 Kusama made the first of her ongoing series titled “Infinity Rooms”. In this complex installation Kusama built a custom space completely lined with mirrored glass and hundreds of soft phallic forms made of white stuffed fabric with red polka dots. Looking in, an observer experienced the illusion of endless time and space emphasized by the seemingly continuous multiplication of worm-like forms. However, it was “Peep Show or Endless Love Show” made in 1966 that allowed Kusama to fully represent a metaphysical experience.
“Peep Show or Endless Love Show” consisted of a mirrored hexagonal room with thousands of blinking, coloured lights flashing in sync with rock’n’roll music. As its title suggests, viewers experienced the work by looking in slots at eye-level. But rather than an erotic dancer, the viewer saw only their reflection, ad infinitum via the surrounding mirrored walls. Like the psychedelic light shows of the period and the sexual revolution of the 1960s, Kusama’s “Peep Show or Endless Love Show”, positioned offer the viewer freedom from convention.
Unlike Kusama’s earlier “Infinity Rooms”, her later installations are less about creating mind-blowing obliteration effects and more about creating spaces of peace and contemplation. Her new works such as “Fireflies on the Water” (2000) and “Infinity Mirrored Room: The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away” (2013) are comprised of tiny coloured LED lights floating in the dark. They create experiences similar to looking down on a city at night from the perspective of outer space. Curator and writer of Kusama’s monograph Katherine Taft, describes Kusama’s most recent installations as, “…introspective spaces for perceiving, listening and feeling.”
While Kusama constructs specific and controlled environments in which to create immersive experiences, Richard prefers the unrestrained potential of wide open public space. Because of their capacity to transform, Richard’s sculptures have been commissioned for notable sites around the world including The JW Marriot Hotel, Chartered Bank in Hong Kong and Tutor Campus Center in California. Like Kusama’s latest installations, his monumental outdoor works create opportunities for meaningful collective experience and contemplation. With their static and yet fluctuating nature, Richard’s monumental Infinity sculptures have the capacity to alter the way we see and relate to the familiarities of space and time.
For example, in the playful work titled “Ball and Jax” commissioned in 2016 by the Ja Ru Toy company, Richard creates an open-air game court out of the company’s headquarters, expanding the experiential
potential of its immediate environment. Brightly coloured like the much smaller original, Richard’s epic “Ball and Jax” is made of stainless steel and finished in glossy red, blue, orange, purple, green and yellow coatings. The enormous size of the sculpture encourages a conceptual re-enactment of childhood games – an embodied experience, as a person tends to feel small in its massive presence. Placed on a concrete, circular base located within a larger circular plaza, the installation also implies the cyclical nature of memory and experience, and the desire to nurture our inner child via creative play. The sculpture’s feature element, an enormous red ball, also references circularity and is symbolic not only of youth and games but also of larger social relations.
With its smooth, highly polished finish the sphere reflects passers-by and temporal environmental shifts. People run, jump, dance and walk while the sun and moon cycle their orbits – all of it reflected on the giant red globe in an endless circuit of time and space. Richard’s “Ball and Jax” negates any possibility of a linear past, present or future insisting instead on an infinite cycle of material, emotional and spiritual connection.
Mass Reflection
For Richard, Infinity begins with the curve, for Kusama the dot. Both forms rely on the geometry of the circle and when paired with mirrored polished surfaces, create an aesthetic overlap between Richard and Kusama’s practices. For example, in 1966, Kusama installed “Narcissus Garden” at the 33rd Venice Biennale. The work consisted of 1500 mirrored balls in what she called a “kinetic carpet”. As soon as the piece was installed outside the Italian pavilion Kusama, dressed in a golden kimono, began selling each individual sphere for 1,200 lire ($2.00USD). Her description for the work read, “your narcissism for sale”. The biennale authorities stopped the unsolicited performance, objecting to “selling art like hot dogs or ice-cream cones” missing the fact that Kusama was critiquing the mechanization and commoditization of artwork.
Like Kusama’s simple yet politically punchy artist multiples, Richard’s “Tangle”® and Infinity sculptures are designed for emotional and spiritual effect. Influenced by the ancient Japanese priest-sculptor Enko, alleged to have carved and installed over 120,000 Buddhist figures throughout eastern and northern Japan, Richard’s sculptural editions are accessible and available to all. While “Tangles”® bring attention to the connection between the maker and the user via a tactile, hands-on relationship (an increasingly uncommon experience in the digital world) Richard’s Infinity sculptures successfully integrate the viewer into their environment via their reflective surface and seductive contours.
“I
am very fond of highly polished, reflective surfaces… they are a large part of Asian Taoist Philosophy because reflectivity is a part of the Tao and the mirror universe.
When I use a reflective surface, I’m trying to capture the surrounding environment and, depending on the lighting, I get a lot of surprises!
It’s
a beautiful thing for me to be able to mirror the universe symbolically and aesthetically.”
Since returning to the USA from Asia in the early 1970s, Richard works to communicate what he calls universal “four-dimensional” energies in three-dimensional form. Like Kusama, Richard desires to express the inexpressible experiences of everyday existence, and those only felt by the spirit. As written by the Chief Curator of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, “Kusama is engaged in a never-ending mission to release the microcosms within herself to the outside, to project it on the macrocosms and the infinite space where our imaginations cannot extend.” In this way, both artists aim to bring forth an unimaginable, intangible and powerful quality of human experience – that which Richard believes is the foundation of creativity.
The artists overlap in other ways as well. For instance, they both have insatiable drives towards making and cultivating new ideas for art. Kusama says, “I’ve been painting, drawing and writing from morning until night every day since I was a child… I don’t rest. I am an insomniac. Even now, if an idea comes to me in the middle of the night, I pick up my sketchbook and draw.” Richard says the same,
…one
can never forget that creative energy is the foundation of everything we do. In my studio I am ceaselessly seeking creative solutions on every level. It could be solving a problem in business, it could be a technical problem like adhering materials to my sculptures, it could be figuring out how I’ll get from point A to point B... It even integrates with the food I eat, with the people I see, going to Burning Man, talking about my book. I don’t have a beginning or end to my creative thinking. I want to be constantly in that state… This is the way I practice... At some point you have to flow with the go and become one with the Tao and that’s how I practice “constant approach”.
For Richard, “constant approach” means that there is no boundary between his studio work, his personal life, his relationships or any other activity. All of his energies are geared towards creative production. Both Kusama and Richard share unique perspectives of the universe, its rhythms and their role as artists within it. It’s this ability to cultivate an expansive state of consciousness that enables them to transcend time, generation, region or culture and make artworks that, as a result, open a space of limitless potential.
Bottom Infinity Z2-66 2011
“I’ve obliterated edges in my own way… there is a parallel between Kusama and I, on some scale.
To being dedicated to infinity in two very different ways…”
Presented at the Bridges 2017 Conference
Art of Infinity Paper by Kenneth Brecher
Presented at the Bridges 2017 Conference
Art of Infinity Paper by Kenneth Brecher
INFINITY AND TAO 無限與道
“The biggest hurricane of the season happened in Hong Kong that night. It forced me to postpone the opening… all of the energy that it took to make the exhibition, all of the crazy things I had to do to make the show go on… it was a vortex energy event.”
“I was trying to find an essential energy… when I combined my studies of nature, humankind and science, I discovered vortex or curvilinear energy to be involved… The art forms of every culture have knots, they have curves, they have circles. This is universal in every culture. From that point on I saw that everything as curving… I found my sense of infinity through lack of fear – just a persistence to explore form in time and space, which is the curve.
I became engulfed in it, through bravery, through being a natural born explorer… The urge, the non-stop urge, to find what can be discovered and what can be manifested through curves in my own ideas and methods...”
Curvism
What is a curve one might ask? and why the ism?
Definition Curve- /KERV/ noun.. a line or outline that gradually deviates from being straight for some or all of its length. ( note: there are over 10 dictionary definitions of curve)
Definition- ism. /IZEM/ noun.. a distinctive practice system or philosophy typically a political ideology or an artistic movement
This exhibition is curated according to this artist’s dedication to creative energy, made manifest through polydimensional forms that very specially are compound curves (curves on two separate axis’).
The anthropomorphic embodiments in my sculptures are my “Curve Figure” inventions. We all know “stick figures”, I have invented “curve figures” like Infinite Man, Infinite Woman and Infinite Child you will see in this exhibition. The utilization of the term CURVISM* is intended to embody an artistic statement, and an artistic movement this artist his avowedly espoused for many years.
Look around the next time you visit a gallery, an exhibition in a museum or installation you will discover a predominance of curving forms, be they in painting, sculpture, dance and other forms in the visual and performing arts. Through my early teachings in Taoism, Tantra, Zen, and with masters discovered “ essential energy forms “ I have since named these energy forms “Tangle Particles” ,these particles are basic to this planet and beyond in deep space. All of these particles have one thing in common, they either Curve, wave, spiral or encircle. On the terrestrial level these particles can be found in the smallest quantum level and grandest cosmic planes. Parallel to the discovery of essential energy forms, I discovered these same forms were made manifest in the cultures on this planet in the arts and crafts from the beginning of time until the present. (the first etched symbols found in caves attributed to humans were spirals and waves.)
The human brain likes curves. Curves are embedded in our DNA. According to conventionally understood physics, there are no straight lines in nature.
Feng Shui espouses that straight lines emit negative energy (sha) and curving, waving, spiraling lines emit positive energy (chi). Curves verily embody and symbolize Infinity... a curve mathematically is Infinite. A compound curve is 2 X Infinity.
For this artist, nothing surpasses the embodiment of Infinity better than Creativity. After all is said and done, we the thinking monkey and not our simian cousins can recognize Infinity. Go ahead, ask any monkey you have ever met...” what is Infinity?” bet you won’t get an answer.
Thus it is we humans, with our vast imaginations, are the genuine source and conveyors of Infinite Creativity. Wonderful Hong Kong has contributed a great deal to my furtherance of CURVISM in polydimensional forms. The pervasive Feng Shui energy and cultural stimuli never cease to inspire this artist. One cannot help but be swept into the myriad of Creative Vortexes abounding here.
This artist for one believes in staying ahead of the curve, or minimally being somewhere, on, around or in the curve or groove.
Richard’s exhibition titled, “Infinity and The Tao” featured over forty years of work. Describing the exhibition, Richard states, “…each object has a different meaning, for example, the “Infinite Group” was the first time that I created a group of massive sculptures that represented how we as humans interact together on a grand scale. There are five massive sculptures surrounding a smaller one called, “The Egg” – about the group and nurturing others.” Within this exhibition Richard also released the first edition of “Infinite Man” and “Infinite Woman”, works symbolic of the artist’s faith in humanity and of our responsibility to manifest positive change in the world. In addition to these works, Richard included “Infinite Touch”, and his earlier work “Alien Buddha”.
To make his Infinity sculptures, Richard references a logo-rhythmic spiral which he manifests in large, stainless-steel forms. The focal characteristic is a coiling, twisting tube that appears to expand outward in all directions. This is symbolic of a primordial growth spiral responsible for the creation of all life forms and signifies expansion and cosmic energy. When constructed with a mirrored surface, these sculptures reflect the largest and smallest details of their surroundings, including the viewer, representing the important relationship between the micro and macro. Richard’s Infinity series offers us an opportunity to transcend the limitations of material existence and enter into boundless time and space.
infinite Manno 12z-01 2015
infinity Andorgyny in Brown CX4-01 2015
Infinite Queen 2013
Top Infinite Child No1z-01 2012
Bottom Infinite Child XC-9 2015
Infinite Horse 2015
“The spiral in a snail’s shell is the same mathematically as the spiral in the Milky Way galaxy, and it’s also the same mathematically as the spirals in our DNA. It’s the same ratio that you’ll find in very basic music that transcends cultures all over the world.”
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Right Infinite Tree 2019
“The wave is the primordial phenomenon that gave rise to the world.”
Goethe
“Space is energy.”
Albert Einstein
“This seems to be the law of progress in everything we do; it moves along a spiral rather than a perpendicular; we seem to be actually going out of the way, and yet it turns out that we were really moving upward all the time.”
Frances E. Willard
He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun rise.
“Eternity” by William Blake
“Look deep in the universe, look deep in the self, you will find the primordial spiral, the animating force of all living things…it is the primordial mother.
Balance of inner and outer forces cannot happen when we identify only with thoughts… we must use our “gut brain”. The “gut brain” is activated via the interpretation of spiral forces found in the religions of Taoism and symbolised by Yin/Yang. Connecting to the spiral force of the universe activates the “hara” located within the belly of the body: where all life begins. The “hara” is strengthened through spiralling motions found in activities like martial arts, belly dancing, whirling dervishes, and creative production. Rational, intellectual thought doesn’t connect us to the spiral of life…”
Inner /Outer Worlds
CURVISM
CUBISM
Obliterating the Edges
By rejecting a single viewpoint as the dominant way to experience time and space, artists Pablo Picasso and George Braque abandoned the traditional rules of perspective. Using multiple vantage points to fracture objects into geometric forms, their images were depicted as dynamic arrangements of volumes and planes. Working side by side in a Paris studio, they invented a set of experimental guidelines that would later become known as Cubism. The year was 1907. Sixty-five years later, Richard began his professional art career, dedicating himself to making a 3D-plus form. He oriented his practice and artwork towards the fluidity and strength found within the curve, wave, spiral and circle. Noticing that the shapes form the foundation of much of nature and culture, he manifested his own unique Curvism manifesto,
“The curve, wave, spiral and circle are the most ubiquitous forms in nature and humanity. These forms offer an open space for possibility, they describe our DNA, the undulating movement of waves, the great spiraling galaxies, quantum particles, light waves, and our ever-expanding universe. They encourage us to think creatively, which in turn drives us to explore, create, learn, and understand.”
Turning away from the realistic representation of bodies, nature, and environments, Cubists transformed familiar imagery into geometric squares and cubes, forgoing the need to compose a rational whole image. They focused on conceptual rather than perceptual reality where distortion and deformation were considered closer to the truth. Cubists explored openness, piercing objects to let space inhabit solid forms, while blending background and foreground and repositioning objects at strange angles. Overlapping and interpenetrating planes allowed them to create a simultaneity or multiplicity of views, opposite to traditional static perspectives.
Art historians believe that Cubist experiments represented a response to the unsettled and changing experience of time and space in the 20th century. Their artworks evidence an attempt to represent the experience of new technology and a constantly shifting environment – a new way to represent movement on the pictorial plane.
“Infinity is not an indecipherable mathematical formula but represents Infinite Creativity nd Infinite Energy. Infinite Wave is a poly-dimensional form manifesting the planetary wave action that never ends and continusously renews.”
Piet Mondrian, Gray Tree, 1910
Pablo Picasso, Violin and Candlestick, 1910
“Edges, I don’t even like ’em.”
After graduating from The University of Hawaii and travelling throughout Asia, Richard returned to the USA in 1975 only to find himself in the midst of political and social upheaval. Mid-70s America was a tumultuous place – minorities fought for equality and citizens protested against war. On the other hand, a “New Right” formed to defend conservatism and the nuclear family. Like the Cubists before him, Richard was compelled to depict this new complicated social environment and attempt to challenge the negativity with which humans were approaching the world. It was with this positive momentum that Richard constructed the first of what would become his most notable work, “Infinite Column.”
Discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 of this book, “Infinite Column” marked the beginning of Richard’s creative philosophical platform, Curvism, and his first attempt to share the positive energy inherent within the circle, curve, wave and spiral with the world. When Richard conceived of the principals of Curvism he did not have the aim of creating a new “ism” – he only wanted to express the energy he saw in all sentient beings, the circle, the curve, the wave, the spiral.
Four-Dimensional Objects
Like Cubist painting, Cubist sculpture was rooted in reducing movement to an instant, presenting various viewpoints of an object to reveal the structure of its making, all while incorporating a dramatically shifting, technological landscape. For example, in Alexander Archipenko’s 1912 sculpture titled “Femme Marchant (Walking Woman)”, the motion of the figure is revealed by curved pieces of material at the back of the legs and around the mid-section, all of which gives the impression of shifting angles and planes, and of changes in motion perceived via irregular, opened-up geometric forms.
Bottom Alexander Archipenko, Femme Marchant (Walking Woman)
In a similar way, but via a continuous tubular shape, Richard marries traditional figurative sculpture with futuristic-looking materials to create fluid motion.
With his “Curve Figures”, Richard takes cues from child-like drawings of stick figures and related ideas like innocence and play. Stick figures offer a single, reduced vantage point and often look stiff and strange. But in Richard’s sculptural family, individually titled “Infinite Man”, “Infinite Woman” and “Infinite Child,” the figures challenge the limitations of one-point perspective by remaining seemingly malleable and changeable.
Left Infinite Woman 2012
Right Infinite Living Man 2014
Left Infinite Child XC6 2012
Right Infinity Z1-66 2011
“Infinite Child,” for instance, displays a series of curves, twists and turns that weave and overlap each other. It’s as if each convolution symbolizes a distinct stage in the development of a child and the choreography of a kid at play. Regardless of the angle, this sculpture appears to face the viewer, as a child follows an adult. Without any solid parts, “Infinite Child” relies on space to make up for material. Richard hasn’t so much pierced the form,
as a Cubist would, he let it breathe. Like Cubists before him, Richard stops short of complete abstraction, maintaining identifiable components of a representational figure – the head, torso, legs and feet are visible. While similar to Cubist techniques, “Infinite Child” clearly represents the principles of Curvism, a linking, twisting, spiraling form representative of the circular energy found in the seed of all nature, culture and creation.
Another Dimension, Another Dimension
Led by changes in culture and technology, the Cubists were willingly detached from a sense of stability. To view an object from all angles simultaneously was the only way to understand its connection to past, present and future, to understand form (and life) beyond length, width and height – in other words, the fourth dimension.
For the Cubists and for Richard, the fourth dimension as a way to experience conceptual, metaphysical realms. The fourth dimension is affiliated with infinity, unity, time and motion. It represents the idea that the spiritual world transcends physical reality, moving beyond three-dimensions to infinite spatial and energetic possibilities.
Mathematically, it refers to time as another dimension along with length, width, and depth. It also refers to space and the space-time continuum, a spiritual realm of omnipresent energy forms. But there is one key difference between the Cubists and Richard’s exploration of the fourth dimension – the shape of their approach, the cube vs. the circle. Richard considers the fourth dimension as made up of billions of what he calls “Curve Particles”. The “Curve Particle” is of such significance to his work that he based his “Tangle”® series upon its properties and changed the name to “Tangle® Particle.”
Infinity C 234 X 2019
When Richard saw the Tibetan Knot in Asia, he began to understand his own connection to the fourth dimension, and how his life was connected to the past and future. For Richard, the fourth dimension wasn’t accessible via imposed overlapping and interpenetrating rectilinear shapes (cubes, squares, and rectangles) but through the inherent unity and fluidity of the curve. Only the circle, with its uninterrupted form, offered the possibility of connecting to multiple cosmos, physical and intellectual planes.
The circle represents a continuation of time and space that the square simply cannot. The cube, in contrast, is a symbol of geometric perfection, stability and permanence – of stillness. The circle, a symbol of infinite renewal, unification and constant motion. Cubists may have chosen to represent the uncertainty of their reality via a series of connected and overlapping cubes because the shape is commonly believed to represent the truth – it looks the same from any perspective.
But Richard found the cube too limiting. The circle, curve, wave and spiral, the main geometries of Curvism, delegate no single narrative. Instead, they allow for perpetual interpretation and inclusivity – curvilinear forms flowing from one to another via a continuous circular tube. Since there are no hard edges or boundaries in Richard’s sculptures, his work presents a sense of constancy and immediacy. For him, length, width and height; time and motion; spirit, mind and body unite.
Richard’s work problematizes and expands the limitations of these qualitative positions – of inside and outside, up and down, front and back – because his work speaks to an invisible dimension of human experience. Viewers that contemplate or attempt to define Richard’s sculptures solely in traditional spatial terms such as these will find that the continuous flow of curving forms is better addressed via broader concepts of time and space, of infinity.
“Through my early teachings in Taoism, Tantra, Zen by Eastern Philosophical masters, I discovered essential energy forms. I have since named these energy forms “Tangle Particles.” These particles are fundamental to this planet and beyond, in deep space. All of these particles have one thing in common, they either curve, wave, spiral or circle.
On the terrestrial level these particles can be found at the smallest quantum level and on the grandest cosmic planes. Parallel to the discovery of essential energy forms, I discovered these same forms were manifest in the cultures on this planet, in the arts and crafts from the beginning of time until the present. In the first drawings and symbols attributed to humans and found in caves, were spirals and waves.”
An Energetic-Plus Form
As Cubist works challenged viewers to better understand a subject via abstraction and essential geometric components, traditional subjects like figures, landscapes and objects were reinvented as increasingly fragmented compositions. In this way, Cubism was reductive, removing the whole in favor of the sum of its parts. Curvism, on the other hand, is expansive – rounding edges, bringing space, time and material together to create a new ever-shifting whole.
Richard’s theory of Curvism helps guide him toward a better understanding of the world based upon the interconnectivity of all living things. As a Curvist, he attempts to depict complex material-spiritual relationships in present day reality but also those based on ancient concepts of balance and energy. Feng Shui, for example, which espouses that straight lines emit negative energy (sha) and curving, waving, spiralling lines emit positive energy (chi). Or, the Yin/Yan symbol, which represents the inter-penetrating opposing and yet complimentary forces of the spiral of nature. Or even own human DNA, which is made up of a torquing spiral. Curvism borrows from these concepts to remind even the artist himself that the entire universe is connected.
Bottom Infinity Touch
“I believe in staying ahead of the curve, or minimally being somewhere, on, around or in the curve or groove.”
“…Nature is our guiding force and pervading energy…”
Hyper-Dimensional Biomorphism:
Nature and The Tangle®
Influenced by the organic abstract forms made by sculptors Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi and Barbara Hepworth, Richard has accomplished an immense body of work focused on celebrating the power of curvilinear forms found in nature – referred to as biomorphism. English critic Geoffrey Grigson and French philosopher Henri Bergson first applied the term to Modernist artwork in the early 1900s. Almost forty years later, Alfred H. Barr used it to describe artwork in the “Cubism and Abstract Art” exhibition at MoMA in New York. Barr wrote of the artworks on display “…Curvilinear rather than rectilinear, decorative rather than structural, and romantic rather than classical in its exaltation of the mystical, the spontaneous and the irrational...”
Biomorphism comes from the Greek words, “bio” meaning life, and “morph” meaning form. However, rather than translate directly to “life-form”, it refers to the tendency to infuse inanimate things or materials with the qualities of living entities. Similarly, “Biomorphic Abstraction” describes a visual, creative language featuring bulbous, curving and contoured forms that reference plants, animals and human bodies but that are not realistic or representative. Because these shapes have an organic familiarity, they are recognizable in form even though they have never been seen before. Bergson connected biomorphism to creativity and instinct, “… creativity evolves in the same way as nature, through processes of fecundity, mutation and… automatism...” Illustrating Bergson’s ideas, Richard’s early Shodo drawing titled, “Chaos Scroll” (1973) features black Chinese ink that epitomizes the spontaneous and fluid fluctuations of the universe.
Shodo is a style of Chinese calligraphy practiced during the Chinese Tang dynasty in the 5th Century. It emphasizes a connection between the flow of brush and ink, and the inner/outer states of the artist and their surroundings. To create a Shodo drawing the artist must maintain a strong relationship to mind and body, the material and ephemeral, constantly adapting to the unpredictable behaviour of ink and water. In Richard’s drawing the focal image consists of looped and overlapping arcs resembling fire, a wave or a plant. Smaller circles and loops seem to rotate around a central force. Meanwhile, a residual, watermark image remains in the background – a subliminal theme of the work. This shadowy presence, almost invisible, illustrates the ever-shifting relationship between past, present and future. Emphasized by its title, “Chaos Scroll” symbolizes the artist’s interest
in spontaneity, flux and the cyclical nature of creation and destruction.
For Richard, synching up with the natural universe means practicing the Taoist philosophies of “Wu Wei” and “Tzu-Jan”. Tzu-Jan is the act of embracing spontaneity, while Wu Wei is based on the idea of non-forcing with an emphasis on avoiding potentially destructive actions. Richard practices Wu Wei and sustains a forty-year practice of Qi Gong – a movement and breathing technique that cultivates slowness and relaxation to align with natural rhythms and energies. In Wu Wei the issue is not whether action should be taken or not taken, but what prompts the act. The practice helps motivate people to adjust their behavior, to be as unplanned and organic as nature, swimming with rather than against the currents of life. In art, Wu Wei is often referred to as surrendering to the nature within the artwork rather than aiming for perfect representation. Here, the artist’s task is not to imitate the external surface of things but to present the “qi” (the essential energy or character) within the subject.)
One of Richard’s recent sculptures titled “Infinity Anti-Gravity X2 SZCC” exemplifies the artist’s interest in the relationship between natural forms, movement and change. Made of highly polished stainless steel, “Infinity Anti-Gravity X2” cascades upwards and outward. Like water it takes no prescribed shape, constantly twisting and turning in a powerful fluid motion. Synchronizing with the rhythms of waves, circles, and spirals, Richard works spontaneously without trying to convey any one form. As a result, this sculpture echoes powerful biomorphic images – billowing smoke, writhing snakes, or undulating and intertwining tree roots are present within its structure.
he incorporated biomorphism into his sculptural wall reliefs, making egg-like objects nested within curvilinear abstract shapes. Eventually, he began making three-dimensional sculptures in plaster, which was pliable and easily altered should a change be necessary. He worked his sculptures instinctively into what he considered “shapes of primordial nature”. In a series of sculptures called “Human Concretions”, Arp succeeded in expressing the powerful connection between humans and nature. As with his other abstract sculptures, the forms avoided representation. They were voluptuous, curvilinear abstractions evocative of seductive natural forces. Some work seemed alive, in motion and expressed something akin to evolution while others evoked cellular transformation.
Arp and Hepworth’s influence on Richard’s work is evidenced is his fluid and flowing biomorphic forms, abstraction of
Arp’s bulbous sculptures were a profound influence on the British Modernist sculptor Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), who would later influence Richard. Hepworth utilized an enormous array of materials and techniques, vastly expanding the language of abstraction and biomorphism. She investigated transformation and evolution from an inner invisible core located within a large material mass such as a piece of stone or wood. In her 1965 sculpture titled, “Sphere with Inner Form”, a round hollow shape rests on the centre of a square base. The entire sculpture is cast in bronze. Hepworth carved a convex form within the sphere alluding to maternal symbolism, nest imagery or anatomical cellular structures. The sculpture’s negative space and the biomorphic form within it reference fertility, abundance and growth, linking interior with exterior.
Hans Jean Arp, Growth
Hans Jean Arp, Human Concretion, 1933
Barbara Hepworth, Sphere with Inner Form, 1963
figurative forms, and admiration for natural elements. For example, Richard’s “Infinity” sculpture presented at ArtExpo in 2001 exemplifies these qualities. Made of thick, voluptuous, stainless-steel tubes that bend, curve, intertwine and encircle, the sculpture’s overall theme is one of continual motion. It’s impossible to locate a beginning of the work as its curving metal lines are constant and radiating negating a central core. The reflective finish reiterates this sense of motion while literally reflecting its human-made surroundings – the adjacent windows, polished floors and metal framework of the Jawitz Convention Centre in New York. Not only does this work reflect architectural details, but it also reflects and incorporates passers-by. This sculpture evokes the natural world via its snake-like shapes and wave-like repetition conjuring a natural force.
Another of Richard’s influences is the renowned “father of sculpture” Constantin Brancusi. Brancusi investigated biomorphic abstraction in France during the early 1900s via industrial materials and machine-like finishes which he applied
to carvings of abstract birds, humans and other shapes. Like Arp and Hepworth, Brancusi rejected realistic representation altogether, preferring abstraction in search of what he called “the inner hidden reality” of his subjects. He stated, “the artist should know how to dig out the being that is within matter.” Brancusi wanted to make work that conveyed a sculptural essence by concentrating on highly simplified forms free from ornamentation. He was largely influenced by myth, folklore, and “primitive” cultures, themes Richard also draws upon. In both Brancusi and Richard’s sculptures, traditional sources of inspiration form a unique contrast to the sleek appearance of their work, resulting in a distinctive blend of modernity and antiquity. Both artists share an affinity for a highly polished surface indicative of their shared interest in industrial materials and processes.
Brancusi completed many sculptures on the theme of birds and flight however, it was his many variations of “Bird in Space” that are most well-known. In these highly polished sculptures, Brancusi ignores the bird’s realistic physical attributes, focusing instead on capturing the essence of flight through an elongated, slightly tapering figure that suggests a swift upward movement. In this way Brancusi also embraces Wu Wei. Instead of trying to suspend the sculpture in air, literally mimicking flight, Brancusi focused on the action – an upward propulsion.
In 1975 Richard created the first of his ongoing Infinity series with a carved wooden sculpture titled “Infinite Column”. Forgoing wood for steel (and
Brancusi, Bird in Space, 1928
eventually many other materials), Richard has since completed more than one hundred editions all beginning with the title Infinite or Infinity. This series of monumental sculptures investigates humanity’s purpose via themes of perpetuity, interconnectedness, creativity and universal archetypes. These ideas are exemplified in his sculpture titled, Infinite Child, 2012.
Through twisted upward motion, this work seems to evolve before the viewer’s eyes. This state of constant becoming is the essence of all living things, of human development and creativity. In life, the child symbolizes what’s to come via a new generation, a new life cycle. Richard’s work expresses the fundamental notion behind biomorphic abstraction: nature is a constant cycle of rebirth and change.
Infinite Column 1973
Left Infinity 8.3 2010
University of Southern Califronia
Above Infinity Trefoil 2021 Califronia Palm Spring Pop-up
Infinity Man with Swarovski 2012
Cole Crest, Hollywood
Top Infinity Anti-gravity X2 2022
Bottom Infinity Anti-gravity X1 2022
Opprosite Page Infinite Keystone In The Matrix 2021
“I discovered Biomorphism during my studies of Art History, Modern and Contemporary Art — Arp, Brancusi, Noguchi – in addition to my own discoveries of nature…the bulbous forms, cupules, concave shapes, and of course, the perfect curve. What brought everything together was the spiral or the vortex – which Profession Neogy introduced me to – I began to workwith these forms and have ever since.”
Nature is a model for the state of perfection. The shape of perfection is, perhaps,a Taurus object, also known as a donut. And, in Chinese culture they have a revered shape called the Pi Dis, which resembled the sun. As I studied these shapes, they made more and more sense to me…
Richard Zawitz, Infinite Living Man, date
Infini-Tea In Collaboration with Richard X Zawitz Popinjays, The Murray, Hong Kong A Niccolo Hotel, 2020
A reflection of life – a journey that is never a straight line. Since the very first afternoon tea menu since his appointment as Chef de Cuisine, talented Chef Alexandre Viriot presents equally delightful gastronomic art to pair with the signature infinity collection by renowned sculptor Richard X. Zawitz.
The limited-time pleasure Infini-Tea Set at Popinjays presents an innovative plunge into the dining scene –where delicate afternoon tea items are masterfully plated on Richard’s celebrated sculpture pieces.
“The more mysterious something is the more we take for granted that we understand it.”
-William Blake
TANGLE CREATIONS
The Original Art Toy, Plaything and Therapeutic Device That Thrives Today
“I wanted to create something that would bring positive energy into the world…”
The Tangle®
In the 1960s it wasn’t as common as it is now for Americans to look to Eastern culture for creative inspiration. But that’s exactly what Richard did after graduating from art school. First, he travelled to Tibet where he encountered the Tibetan Knot, a spiritual symbol carved in the clay tablets of the Indus Valley Civilizations in the northwest regions of South Asia. The ancient symbol represents the interweaving of the spiritual path and the flow of eternal time and movement. Its overlapping links symbolize the metaphysical lineages linking us to our ancestors, connecting the past with the present and future – it is a unifying symbol. After viewing the Tibetan Knot in a temple, Richard began to imagine a sculptural knot with no beginning and no end, one that could twist, turn and change into various shapes but never lose its essential character. Later when he studied Shodo Chinese calligraphy with master artist Morito Shiyu, Richard found the flow of ink on paper and its relationship to inner stillness similar to the principles of the Tibetan Knot – symbolizing the connection to mind and body, and between the material and the ephemeral.
Influenced by these powerful images, Richard started his philosophical journey by studying the Tibetan Knot’s pattern, interwoven curvilinear lines and reiterative structure. Surprising to him, Richard found this same pattern in other structures, and attempted to reveal the common underlying formula. It was during this creative research that he had the idea to connect and combine the mathematical tangent function known as “TAN”, one of the three most common trigonometric functions, with form, symbolism and sculpture. His epiphany resulted in his very first “Tangle”® – “TAN” + “angle” = “Tangle”®
Recognizing that the “TAN” angle was of great significance, Richard paid close attention to knot theory – the study of numerical knots inspired by everyday knots such as those in shoelaces or rope. Mathematical knots differ from common knots in that the ends are joined together so that they cannot be undone (similar to the Tibetan Knot). The simplest mathematical knot is the ring. Richard intuited a strong connection between the spiritual symbolism of the Tibetan Knot and its rational, mathematical counterpart.
For example, some of the main objects in Tibetan Buddhism include the Wheel of Law, representing the law of the Buddha set in motion, the Mandala symbolizing an entire cosmos in miniature scale and the prayer wheel inscribed with mani prayers and containing a sutra scroll. All these ancient symbols are based upon a ring or a simple knot.
“My theory is that there is an intuitive or intrinsic understanding of the curve in the human brain...”
Observing the ubiquity of circles, waves and curvilinear lines in nature and civilization, Richard was well on his way toward his most renowned work. In YEAR he made “Infinite Sculpture” (PICTURE?), comprising of a series of linked quarter-round curves, each twistable around a central axis, which would soon be commercialized as “The Tangle”®. From this early prototype he went on to design a more complex, component-oriented version, consisting of a series of eighteen 90-degree curved sections, five inches in length, jointed together and able to pivot at each point. And it employs what he describes as a “pure compound curve – a curve coming from two positions, the front and the side.” But experientially, “The Tangle”® is much more than a series of connected curves, it can be manipulated into an infinite array of shapes. In 1980, Richard located a plastics factory in Hong Kong that could meet his challenging technical specifications and designed and ordered moulds. He began manufacturing what would become his most famous artwork, on mass scale.
“I will not be satisfied until every man, woman, and child experiences the joy of the creative process.”
Children holding different Tangle toy products, from counter clockwise....
“I grew up in the 50s in America. My toys were balls and bats, little cowboys and Indians, and puzzles.
I loved jigsaw puzzles…
The Tangle® is a “plaything” that can be construed as a puzzle if you wish. But it’s really not a puzzle – it’s more of a solution.”
Then the first “Tangle”® arrived, Richard felt a deep sense of satisfaction, accomplishment and wonder. As a result of his research into symbolism, science and math, and in conjunction with the fact that the initial prototype had several technical glitches, he named his new creation Tangle®, the act of playing with it Tangling and those who engage with one, Tanglers. Richard copyrighted “The Tangle”® in 1981 and applied for a patent in 1982. The patent required a description of its “utility” so it was officially registered as an “annular support device formed by a series of identical torus segments with adjacent segments connecting end-to-end in a continuous loop.”
The documentation describes the sculpture as a “manual diversion tranquilizer”. Patent number 4,509,929 was granted to Richard and his company, then called Tangle Toys, later to become Tangle Creations in 2008. But regardless of the shifts in branding, the company’s mandate remained the same – Creativity for All. Richard was aware of the attractive qualities of the curve and spiral, but what he didn’t predict was the joy playing with “The Tangle”® would offer its audience. With its infinite possibilities for form and function, “The Tangle”® turns everyone into an artist and creative thinker.
“Tangle Creations is, was and always will be dedicated to peace through creativity.”
Tangle® Creations: Creativity for All
In 1972 Richard moved to Kyoto, Japan to work as a sculptor. He became fascinated with the story of Enku, a nomadic Buddhist monk who lived in Japan in the 17th century during the early Edo period. Enku is known as a “shugendo”, a devotee of a religion comprised of Taoism, Shinto and Buddhism. He travelled all over Japan carving small statues of the Buddha. He is reputed to have carved approximately 120,000 figurines using only found timbers and a few crude strokes of an axe. These sculptures were made not for art’s sake, but for their spiritual significance. Enku placed these simple expressions of devotion in hamlets and villages all around the country to remind the people that saw them that enlightenment is possible. This idea of an inexpensive, simple and widely available symbol of positivity had an enduring effect on Richard as he searched for a sculptural form that could inspire creativity in everyone.
In 1981 Tangle Creations, then called Tangle Toys, launched its first invention, “The Infinite Sculpture”. It came in two sizes, original and medium. Ten years later, the name changed to The Tangle® and the scale to large and small (now called original and junior). Each Tangle® has eighteen sections that can be added or removed and shaped into an infinite array of aesthetically dynamic forms. Variations in its appearance include changes to its core material (some are metal or plastic) and/or its size or surface treatment. For example, some Tangles® are coated in crystals and function as jewellery, some in felt or in soft spiky finishes which facilitate a range of therapeutic uses. American Psychologist Dr. Roland Rotz wrote in his book, Fidget to Focus: Outwit Your Boredom: Sensory Strategies for Living with ADD, “Researchers have begun to discover we can improve our ability to process information and generate novel ideas through movement, which varies and enhances our point of view. Recent research on movement and the brain suggests that small and large motor movements are critical for improvement in cognitive function such as focusing, remembering and critical thinking. Movement also plays an important role in improving emotions like pleasure, joy and contentment.”
The Tangle® is the perfect solution for people with ADHD and other concentration challenges because it is endlessly moveable and changeable and as a result, infinitely interesting.
“My students, particularly children with high distractibility, find it helpful to have something to do with their hands when they are relating a story. It helps them to focus on the pertinent aspects while their motor overflow from their anxiety is discharged on The Tangle®.”
- Lillian (TangleCreations.com)
The Tangle® has also been adapted into larger functional objects. For instance, Richard attached sheets of clear and/or coloured methacrylate (industrial strength plastic) between the curves of its structure resulting in sculpture-as-furniture – side tables and coffee tables. He also designed a Tangle Lamp® that allows users to twist and manipulate the arms of the lamp in an array of positions for ideal lighting conditions.
Because of its capacity for endless configurations and imaginative abstract forms, The Tangle® is also used for storytelling and community building. It’s considered an interactive learning device, or what Richard’s company calls a BrainTool®. The colourful, bendable twistable structure is well suited to DNA modelling and is often used in scientific and educational contexts to demonstrate complex anatomical and/or scientific concepts. The Tangle® helps users move beyond the practical side of learning or therapy by focusing on a lighthearted tactile exploration of form and space.
The objects made by Richard and Tangle Creations transform the act of play into learning. When people engage in play, people feel freer to experiment, make independent and different conclusions than those of their peers, or even an instructor and as a result, retain memorable lessons and facts more easily. This is also what a successful artwork does – it encourages conceptual experimentation and inquiry while offering the freedom to undergo self-directed discovery.
Due to the inherent versatility of The Tangle®, it became one of the first of an ever-growing category of collectible objects called playthings or art toys. Creators of playthings, including Richard himself, prefer to call them art while retailers see them more as toys. Regardless of the name, increasing demand for art toys has made the sector a thriving business. To date, thousands of global corporations including Google, Apple and Facebook have used Tangles® to help identify themselves as creative and progressive companies, to foster idea exchange and enhance brainstorming sessions. To date, over 250 million (check number) have been sold worldwide. Because of the success of the original Tangle®, Richard and his brand have developed numerous products based on the initial invention –miniature sculptures, inflatables, McDonald’s premium toys, pens, lamps, chairs, sports balls, R/C robotic toys, science models and therapy devices (with FDA registration).
“I just wanted to thank you for making this amazing product! I got my first Tangle® three years ago and was addicted right away. I don’t know what it is about the Tangle® that makes it so hard to put down. I’m a student and the Tangle® helps me concentrate and focus on my work while helping me feel less stressed. It is also very helpful when I am studying. That was definitely one of the best purchases I ever made. Thank you.”
–Laura
(TangleCreations.com)
In an appropriately cyclical way, The Tangle® produces the same positive energy with which it was originally created. As an art toy, The Tangle® is popular because it challenges our expectations, fusing personal, creative sensibility with the larger world of art, art history, design and toys. As a hand-sized individual sculpture, The Tangle® functions like an abstract, personal talisman. A spiral in almost every permutation, it symbolizes the many transformations of life as it unfolds from the center outward, slowly revealing hidden forms. Its twisting form connects the user to larger, worldly references including vortexes, the Fibonacci sequence, the golden spiral, logarithmic spirals and Nautilus shells.
“As a teacher, I plan on introducing every class I have to Tangles® to help them focus, work on behaviour problems and most importantly, expand their minds. You may have just discovered the link between the physical and metaphysical. Thanks!”
– Sarah Marie
Consequently, the user finds themselves in a subconscious exploration of relationships – a fundamental part of life. The Tangle® increases the opportunity for creative thinking and interaction, a way to express unbounded imagination and apply innovative solutions to problems. Richard and Tangle Creations make objects that foster these important skills while helping us connect with each other.
“The most rewarding part of working with The Tangle® is to see the benefits it brings to people. It’s extremely rewarding as an artist that wants to make a difference – to know that something you’ve created is helping others. That’s very important.
The Tangle® itself is a small miracle – that’s why I call myself a Thaumaturgist – that’s a magician and a bringer of small miracles. My job, including studying metaphysics back in the 1960s, was to find some of the secrets of nature, and I believe that The Tangle® is one of those secrets.”
“As a non-theory person, I am intuitive. My middle initial is X, which stands for experimental.”
Infinite Design
Richard believes that innovation can be realized in every project. Infused with his experimental sensibility, Richard’s designs are a dynamic and radical investigation of material and form.
In 2008 Richard launched a series of luxury chairs that fuse the playful elegance of Curvism with the science of ergonomics and the quality of Italian craftsmanship. These chairs are guided by Richard’s profound respect for the social, cultural, and spiritual implications of the objects that surround us.
Significant partnerships include state-of-the-art speakers with Sony Japan, a shape shifting lamp made with Polyconcept Holland, a unique line of Infinity Furniture shown exclusively at the Salone del Mobile Milano 2012 with Baci & Abbracci, and a celebrated collaboration with handbag designer J.W. Anderson launched at French high fashion retailer Colette in 2016.
“I am a firm believer in art being useful. I love art for art’s sake and of course I make art for art’s sake, but I also create utilitarian art. My Infinity speakers, my lamps, pens, books, tables, benches –I call them platforms –are all utilitarian. They are sculptures you can use, sculptures you can sit on.
The work is contemporary but also futuristic…”
Left
XYZ426.1
Right
XYZ426.2
Top Infinite Platform
Table
Richard X Zawitz Infinity And Fashion Colette, Paris 2016
The King of Pop, Michael Jackson, Cover Story of Italian VOGUE Oct 2007
TRANSFORMING THE FUTURE
“When
I was making the work for the JW Mariott Hotel in Hong Kong, I knew the location where it was to be placed and I knew the parameters. But I specifically allowed for spontaneity to find the shape. It took about eight minutes to get the idea using a digital model, and when I found it, I loved it and just stopped.”
MIND FREEDOM REVOLUTION 1960s
Between 1968 and 1972, Richard witnessed massive cultural shifts surrounding the production and reception of visual art. Part of this revolution included the move from traditional analogue mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture and printmaking to digital technologies. As early as 1965 Frieder Nake made a work titled “Hommage à Paul Klee” featuring one of the world’s first algorithms and a room-sized ER 56 computer. The computer mathematically interpreted a 1929 Klee painting and produced several corresponding new images. The next year sculptor Robert Rauschenberg formed a non-profit group called EAT: Experiments in Art and Technology bringing together artists and engineers. For the first EAT event titled, “9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering” Rauschenberg used infrared cameras, video projections and radio transmitters attached to tennis rackets to produce a multimedia performance. In 1985 Andy Warhol, one of Richard’s influences, was commissioned by Commodore International to produce artworks to demonstrate the computer’s graphic art capabilities. The experiment resulted in a series of images titled “Amiga Experiments for Commissioned Digital Work” – doodles, camera shots of a desktop, classic Warholian images of a banana, Marilyn Monroe, Campbell’s soup and portraits.
Opposte page
Landmark Sculpture Proposal for Oman Airport
For Richard, digital rendering tools helps him conceptualize new sculptures on a monumental scale. He can imagine and immediately visualize massive public sculptures situated on-site, all over the world. Richard values the process because of how quickly and easily he can create new and complex forms. For him, the use of digital technology is the first step in a larger creative process including finding the right materials, manufacturers, engineers and fabricators. Conceptual renderings allow him to investigate the interplay between natural and man-made, biological and cultural, virtual and real, art and design – a pluralistic vision that evidences his commitment to innovation and fantasy.
Left
Andy Warhol
Right
Frieder Nake, Hommage a Paul Klee, 1965
Above
Infinite Dolphin Proposal for Oman Airport
Left
Infinite Horse Proposal for Oman Airport
“Computer renderings are an important part of the process of imagining...”
Richard X Zawitz Studio, Gallery and Loft, Hong Kong
CIVILIZATION AND THE MONKEY
Why we are here!
Why are we here?
“I want to get people thinking about why they’re here and to be more compassionate. We are here to be creative, not destructive.”
Richard relies on his knowledge of natural energy systems, Eastern Philosophy and spirituality, art history and mythology, to create sculptures that integrate imagery from both contemporary and ancient ideas. In a recent series of work titled, “Civilization and The Monkey: Why We Are Here! Why Are We Here?” Richard employed metaphor and symbolism to create eighteen epic sculptures with an equally challenging topic – the meaning of life.
Commissioned to celebrate The Year of the Fire Monkey in 2016, “Civilization and The Monkey…” reimagines the progression of civilization via the depiction of sculptural monkeys and a tree of life, which portray various categories of human experience, phases and markers of time. Specifically, Richard created self-defined archetypes and classifications including beauty, magic and enlightenment to investigate the spiritual and material motivations of contemporary culture.
In the Chinese zodiac the monkey is the ninth sign, called “shen hou.” “Shen” belongs to the metal element in the theory of Wuxing or “five elements”. In traditional Chinese mythology, the monkey god is almost all pervading and all powerful, and images can be seen in many traditional settings as a talisman of protection. For example, according to Miao mythology (an indigenous group in China) at first there were no people, only monkeys. One day the monkeys entered a cave where a divine dragon resided. The dragon blew on the monkeys with divine breath, which caused them to transform into modern human beings. Taking cues from Chinese mythology, Richard’s monkeys are hybrids – half human and half monkey – symbolizing human ancestry and the unification between human and nature.
“Each
of the eighteen monkey sculptures meaning, representing a different stage of development. The monkey sculptures and act as symbols and archetypes of the grand
MONKEY OF FIRE
MONKEY OF AGRICULTURE
MONKEY OF COMPASSION AND LOVE
MONKEY OF HAPPINESS
MONKEY OF PLAY
MONKEY OF GOD
MONKEY OF SCIENCE
MONKEY OF INVENTION
MONKEY OF FEMALE BEAUTY
has a symbolic our civilization’s the “Tree of Infinity” question: ‘Why?’”
MONKEY OF CREATIVITY
MONKEY OF MUSIC
MONKEY OF COMMERCE
MONKEY OF MAGIC
MONKEY OF KINGS
MONKEY OF ENLIGHTENMENT
MONKEY OF EVIL
MONKEY OF TECHNOLOGICAL INVENTION
THE MONKEY
“There are three aspects to life—the physical, the intellectual and the spiritual as in the world of things, the world of thought and the world of feelings. Some of these are present in all forms of life but it is only in human that all three come together in mind, body and spirit. It is the combination of all three that gives us the capacity to believe, to reason and to create.”
As a way of gaining greater understanding of his own experiences, Richard often speaks of human life as having three inherently interdependent categories: the physical (body), the intellectual (mind) and the spiritual (soul). Although the eighteen monkeys fall into multiple classifications, it is easy to see Richard’s core triad at play. Beginning with the physical, the Monkey of Beauty, Monkey of Kings, Monkey of Fire, Monkey of Commerce and The Monkey exemplify worldly concepts based upon the power gained from human experience and relationships.
The Monkey of Kings depicts a male monkey in royal regalia stepping forward in a contraposto stance, holding a long pole. He is Sun Wukong, Chinese master of seventy-two methods of transformation, able to lift a 13,500-jin (6,750-kg) staff with ease, and to travel 108,000 li (54,000 km) in one somersault. Wukong, also known as “The Monkey King”, is featured in many legends of the Song dynasty period. Following the legend, Richard’s “Monkey of Kings” symbolizes the ability to organize and govern with strength.
In keeping with concepts of power, strength and control the Monkey of Fire and the Monkey of Commerce represent two aspects of our ability to manipulate material conditions. The “Monkey of Fire” is shown holding yellow and red flames, gazing outward with a stoic expression. The harnessing of fire is a signifier of human-technological progress, and of control over the external environment. Used for heat, cooking, tool making, protection, hunting, rituals, agriculture, domestic and creative processes, fire was a substantial factor in expanding and developing the lives of early hominids. It enabled important changes in human behaviour, social stratification and establishment of early economies, overall health and geographic expansion.
The “Monkey of Commerce”, rendered in a shiny gold finish, is a logical following to the “Monkey of Fire”. Happy with his three golden, coin-like bracelets (perhaps actually handcuffs) and slick golden fur suit, this monkey sits at ease upon his crystal-shaped fortune. He smiles with satisfaction. Now more than ever before, the one who watches over the fire (the one who has control of the means to production) has the power, and the money. Through the “Monkey of Fire” and the “Monkey of Commerce”, Richard tries to tell us something – that the power that money seems to offer is the greatest myth of all. In the exhibition catalogue the artist states, “the symbol of fire in the Monkey’s hands represents our control – or lack thereof…”
Top Monkey of God
Right Monkey of Invention
Shifting from the physical plane to the intellectual, Richard made the “Monkey of Invention”, “Monkey of Intelligent Design”, “Monkey of Evil”, “Monkey of Agriculture” and “Monkey of Science”. The “Monkey of Agriculture” and the “Monkey of Science” hold a gold shovel, a test tube and microscope respectively. The “Monkey of Agriculture” looks downward as he digs, illustrating the change from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies, which shifted the focus on daily needs to long-term future storage capable of feeding mass groups of people. As civilizations grew larger, agriculture became responsible for mass sustenance but also the demise of environment and economy – overconsumption, labor exploitation, destructive plantations and waste. The shovel also symbolizes both our own and the monkey’s ability to construct and use tools. These sculptures exemplify the pursuit of new technologies and advancement, while in other monkey sculptures Richard explores the consequences of blind ambition and greed. Richard’s “Monkey of Evil” holds a massive gun, its face strict and somber, removed of all emotion. The monkey barricades its body with the weapon, signifying control. This sculpture represents the exact opposite of Richard’s leitmotif – negativity in its extreme. This monkey is self-defensive, aggressive and acting from a place of pure ego.
Meanwhile, the “Monkey of Intelligent Design” is transfixed by a large cell phone. No longer outward looking, the sculpted representational boy forgoes the physical and spiritual realms in preference of the virtual. This sculpture is markedly different from the other monkey sculptures – it’s fully human. As such, the sculpture depicts an endpoint in the evolution from monkey to human, and perhaps comments on the end of a certain kind of relationship with nature and imagination. Whether our current obsession with technology will prove to be positive or negative, Richard does not state, he simply provides us with a mirror.
Reminding his viewers of the importance of seeing beyond the physical and intellectual realm Richard made seven monkey sculptures symbolic of the ephemeral human spirit – “The Monkey of Happiness”, “Monkey of Music”, “Monkey of Play”, “Monkey of Magic”, “Monkey of Enlightenment”, “Monkey of Love and Compassion” and “Monkey of Creativity”. The work most indicative of transcendence and spirituality, the “Monkey of Enlightenment” takes the form of Siddhartha Guatmama, a traditional sitting Buddha figure. Like the “Monkey of Love and Compassion” (shown as the mythic Guan Yin with hands clasped at heart centre), “Monkey of Enlightenment” sits with its hands in the Buddhist position of “Dharmachakra Mudra”, symbolizing teaching and peace via the Buddhist wheel of law.
Studying the “Monkey of Happiness”, “Monkey of Music”, “Monkey of Play”, “Monkey of Creativity” and the “Monkey of Magic” it seems as though Richard is creating yet another mathematical-creative equation. Play + music + happiness = creativity. In Richard’s world, to be truly creative one must discover their inner magic first. Shown holding a large serpent and a diamond in outstretched arms, the “Monkey of Magic” may represent Richard and his identification as a thaumaturge or a magician, making this sculpture a quiet self-portrait. Like Richard, the “Monkey of Magic” encourages the audience to unleash their individual creative power by symbolizing the laws of the paranormal world. The Octahedron (diamond) is one of five
sacred geometries and the third of five Greek Platonic solids – patterns and shapes that represent the sacred world of ideas according to Plato. The diamond symbolizes the “careful balance between multiple energetic forces suggesting the need for diplomacy, grace and a willingness to learn.” In ancient Chinese culture the snake or serpent represents female Yin energy and fertility. The “Monkey of Magic” holds the snake between the earth and sky like an umbilical cord, joining all sentient beings to mother earth and to god above, via an eternal spiritual lineage. Especially pertinent to Richard’s work, the snake also symbolizes the primordial, life-giving spiral.
Exhibited in 2016 in the Rotunda of Exchange Square in Hong Kong, Richard’s extensive series of monkeys transformed the space into a sculptural, anthropological excavation of human activity. In keeping with Richard’s creative manifesto, Curvism, the circular Rotunda helped to visualize Richard’s non-linear story based on ancient metaphors and myths including the divine garden and the theories of evolution and creation. With its large stage-like presence, the Rotunda became a metaphoric nucleus. Fittingly, Richard planted his “Tree of Infinity” – a stainless steel tree sculpture symbolizing the origin of life – directly in the center.
“On the ‘Tree of Infinity is the naked ape. I evolve the ape through different archetypes to the latest human being, what I like to call the ‘Monkey of Technological Invention’ He’s what I view as the latest iteration of the human being.”
As an archetype, the “Tree of Life” is widely recognized. Charles Darwin noted it as symbol of common descent in his theory of evolution and in Christian religion and culture, it’s known as the “Tree of Knowledge”, connecting heaven and the underworld with all forms of creation. In non-Western culture it’s called the “World Tree” or “Axis Mundi”. For Richard, the “Tree of Infinity” recalls Eastern Philosophical ideas of eternity and connectivity as it references the beginning of the spiritual life for both Taoists and Buddhists. One fundamental Taoist legend features a tree that produces a peach every three thousand years. The one who eats the fruit receives immortality. For Buddhists the origin story of The Buddha features The Bodhi Tree, under which the Buddha meditated for forty-five days to attain enlightenment. “The Tree of Life” is even present in the human body, visible as a network of “nadis” or energy meridians, which form tree-like branches in structures we call veins and capillaries.
Richard’s “Tree of Infinity” stands four meters high embodying the power and mystery of a vortex. Featuring the artist’s well-known construction methods and polished aesthetic, the work features three massive silver tubes that mirror the surroundings in its surface and spread tendril-like on the ground. The roots climb upward with power and grace becoming the trunk of the tree, which is a colossal, twisted column. Emerging from the core, the three columns separate and hover in the air, transformed into robust branches. With no beginning and no end, Richard’s “Tree of Infinity” doesn’t provide conclusive answers about the source of humanness, nor does it speculate the future of our evolution. But it does encourage investigation, contemplation and reverence regarding the meaning of human life.
Rich with remedial mythologies and symbols “Civilization and The Monkey: Why We Are Here! Why Are We Here?” illustrates humanity’s unique capability for love, compassion and lightness of spirit but also evil and destruction. The immersive installation cycles through a linear timeline of human history but with a curvilinear attitude reminding us that we can always start again. Richard begs us to re-evaluate the direction of our energy, and our future, asking “Why Are We Here?” This is a difficult if not impossible question, but one that Richard’s life work sets out to answer.
PERFORMANCE ART
Adopting what he calls a “plus-ist” attitude, Richard doesn’t believe in creative limitations. In addition to being a sculptor, inventor and toymaker, Richard is also a performance artist. Attending art school in the late 1960s and ‘70s, Richard learned about the Dada, Situationist and Fluxus art movements. Their early performance works were titled “happenings”, “live art”, “action art”, “actions” and/ or “interventions” and were intended to challenge the structures of traditional art and cultural norms. The artists experimenting with these new mediums tried to create ephemeral and authentic experiences that could not be repeated, captured or purchased. It was their desire to remain outside of commercial markets and conventional means of exhibition like commercial art markets and galleries. Andy Warhol’s early films and videos, which featured live rock music, exploding lights and abstract bodily gestures were of particular influence and interest to Richard when he was a young artist.
“I like to act. I’m an advocate of entertainment. I believe I have a calling to sculpt with my hands… but I see my Infinity, Tangle® and monkey works also tied to performance… because I’m there interacting with my work in front of people...”
In December 2017 Richard put on his custom-made “Lightsuit” – a black outfit with hundreds of LED lights sewn on the pant legs, sleeves and torso. He also wore shoes that lit up as his feet hit the ground. Looking a bit like an energy-warrior, he marched straight into the hubbub of one of the world’s most well attended international art fairs, Art Basel Miami, shouting “I’m going to save your mother-f@#*ing planet!”
The lights on his suit circuited through various sequences creating ephemeral patterns from circular to starburst shapes. The more he moved the more the suit lit up illustrating Richard’s creative ideology –the energy you give is the energy you get in return. Moving in spontaneous gestures in response to the audience, environment and objects surrounding him, Richard initiated a call and response-type performance, a ritual of sorts that encouraged positive creative exchange.
Richard believes life is anything but a straight line. This is evidenced by the diverse ways in which he manifests the positive and productive potential of human creativity. Through performance, Richard reminds us that life and are are complimentary energetic experiences, and that positive energy is abundant and accessible. Performance allows him to physically engage with people and art simultaneously, connecting to a collective inner spirit while both activating and being invigorated by a shared creativity.
Richard’s first performative work was staged as a part of his thesis exhibition at The University of Hawaii in 1972. Richard draped a gigantic black fabric from the roof of the school into the opening of a large phallic airplane part, Accompanied by selected classmates, Richard danced and rolled around on the ground surrounding the tubular form, exploring the dualistic relationships associated with Yin/Yang, stable and kinetic energies and their correlation to the immediate environment. This initial ritualistic experiment led to a long-lasting investigation of the inner energies of the body and their manifestation in people, places and things.
“My goal as an artist is to project more creativity to the world. I want to change the course of history with creativity and positive energy.”
WORLD SULPTURE NEWS
Sculpture demands to be touched.
This is something Richard Zawitz appreciates. From the directness of figuration to the aesthetics of abstraction to the complexities of infinity and Tao, Zawitz says his “understanding of sculpture is that it is to be experienced tactilely.”1 Since his earliest works in wood and marble, of more than 40 years ago, Zawitz has made art that enchants the eye and stirs the imagination and stimulates the intellect. It is, as he says, part of his role as an artist andinnovator “to enlighten and to delight.” And in the manner of a thaumaturgist— a performer of miracles, a magician of sorts—he sees himself as “changing lives through my sculpture.”
The singular artistic voice is a rarity: Zawitz has it. Compelled by a searching personality he has made elegant and lyrical sculptures that speak to a bold calligraphic sense of line and form and to a wide range of philosophical and spiritual questions, from humankind’ place within the universe to the personal nature of creativity. At the same time, Zawitz also deals with the quotidian realities of our environment, of nature’s extraordinary power and its fragility, and people’s influence on these, which lends many of his sculptures a natural force and adisconcerting intensity. One work in particular stands out for its intensity: Infinite Living Man (2014). The plants growing within the sculpture’sspiraling stainless steelframe lends the work an organic power that, at first glance, is a touch unsettling but then is quickly seen asentirely natural. In thiswork Zawitz brings together a Japanese technology that combines foam and dirt in which to grow plants: here, over slow time, the plans will become one with the
stainless steel. The essential natural reality of Infinite Living Man extends the ‘human’ dynamic of Zawitz’s earlier wireframe Infinite Man (2012).
In the act of making Richard Zawitz travels between reality and the threads of his dreams to educate. For him “infinity is in all of us and in all things we perceive. Man and his symbols are my raison d’être for being creative, a sculptor, and as a performer with public exhibitions. I want to spread the gospel of man and his symbols and the power of creativity as far and as wide as I possibly can in this lifetime and beyond. Nature is our guiding force and pervading energy.
Humans are lost in a void. Why do humans pay vast sums to acquire and own art? [Because] there is power and energy to art. Creativity is infinite. I am on a relentless pursuit to manifest its spirit.” Whether he is dealing with smooth polished stainless steel or the colorful and grotesque forms of his new Alien DNA series,Zawitz understands well that things change, that the creative process is uncertain.
He sees the uncertainty and transience of our journeys through Tao and Infinity, knowing that nature takes its own course and arrives on our doorsteps of its own volition, although, as Zawitz says, we “must be open to energy and follow the flow.” Through his art Richard Zawitz has no problem arriving at the gates of our imaginations “to enlighten and to delight.”
“This is more than just an exhibition,” says Zawitz. “This is going to be a sculptural play. Each of the figures represents something very important in civilisation.” With monkey heads and bodies shaped in the form of Zawitz’s signature curves, each of his new creations references significant historical, cultural and scientific archetypes, ranging from female beauty and commerce to sport and creativity, to list but a few.
Having grown up in 1950s America, art education was lacking for Zawitz. But then along came the 60s and the hippie movement, which allowed him to discover his creative side. “I’m in the first wave of the baby boomers,” he says. “By 1966, I was already tuned in, turned on and dropped out.” Around the same time, Zawitz was introduced to the philosophy and works of Chinese Taoist master Chan Wingtsit. He was inspired and discovered an inner urge to create. “With a hammer and chisel of all things,” the artist exclaims. “It was always going to be sculpture. For all his talk of toughness, Zawitz is also the inventor of a sinuous style called curvism. “Curvism is an object that curves, but from a creative point of view,” he says, “Even from my very earliest sculpture, I found myself making bulbous, rounded shapes and shapes that curve.” As a creative, Zawitz believes in inspiring audiences to re-evaluate their worldviews, particularly with this new show. “I want to get people thinking about why they’re here and to be more compassionate,” he says. “We are here to be creative, not destructive,” he adds. Initially, Zawitz struggled to tie the theme, the monkeys and the venue
together while ‘amusing all the jaded people of Hong Kong’. After decades of creating art, Zawitz shows no signs of stopping and is always looking to create bigger and better sculptures. “It’s so rewarding to make giant things,” he remarks. “I love making giant things!”
Zawitz is particularly excited to showcase his new sculptures here in Hong Kong, a city’s he’s been closely involved with for the past 20 years. So much so, he has even set up a studio in Wong Chuk Hang. “My art is more at home in Asia than it is in America,” he says. “There’s more sensitivity towards it here and I have a very nice environmental relationship with Hong Kong.” Aside from challenging people’s perceptions, Zawitz hopes that audiences can simply enjoy the art and be inspired. “I really hope I can provoke, inspire, compel and initiate feelings of creativity,” he tells us. “I want to have people walk away and say ‘wow’.
“I’m not going to make something really weird and have people guess what it is”
My goal as a creative is to project more creativity to the world. I want to change the course of history with creativity.” He also encourages viewers to touch the art and fully experience his work.
“Besides signature works, I’ve kept exploring materials, crafts, and philosophy in the purpose of adding something new to the sculptures, such as new textures, shapes, characters, functions, and massages, etc.“
It happened that Richard was back to his studio in Hong Kong from the US, I seized this opportunity to talk to him in person about aesthetics and philosophy. The room is full of silvery sculptures as well as a series of newly created artworks, which are wood and stone carvings of Chinese style.
Having strong interest in Chinese culture since he was small, Richard was specialised in sculpture and Taoist philosophy when he was studying in the University of Hawaii. He recalled that he made his first step into the realm of art because of his first wife, who was born into a family of artists. In those days, Richard, having the characteristics of hippy, loved freedom and was keen to pursue everything that he was passionate about.
Upon graduation, he travelled to several places such as Tibet, Japan, India, and Nepal, etc. to learn wood and stone carving. Eventually, he got inspired during a trip to Nepal in 1973. In the course of crossing the Himalayas, sculptures and named it Infinity, which is to convey the thoughts of Taoism and “power thinking” through art.
Let’s share something about your cooperation with J.W. Anderson that is rarely known to others.
At first, J.W. Anderson contacted us and initiated a cooperation of a series in the next season. From ornaments to printings, you can always find the patterned element of Infinity. The main point is, the Brand has introduced a new handbag design that used sculpture as the handles. And I’ve also lent out a sculpture of Infinity to be displayed in the showroom of J.W. Anderson, which also erves as a decoration for photo-shooting.
All the artists have stories behind them, so does Richard X Zawitz, one of the world-famous sculptors in the current American Art industry.
70-year-old Zawitz was born and raised in Pittsburgh in 40s and 50s. Though it was the time the legend artist Andy revealing outstanding talent, the trend of art creation was not popular at that time, not to mention to choose being an artist as the career.
For that matter, young Richard was impressed with doing art creation. He recalled and said with a smile that it was happened long time ago, even as far as I could think of. At that time, he was just a ten-year-old boy. All he thought at that moment was simply how to enjoy his life.
In 1967, Richard was 21, but it was the important year in his life. He said that in 1967, America entered into the so-called Hippie Generation. The young generation started to rethink the limitation in the past and tried to break through the stereotypes and get rid of the traditional creeds. The things that were not encouraged to do it before, like art creation, were gradually accepted and identified in society. Being influenced on this new trend, at age of 21, Richard started to dig out the potential and the desire inside him, which was the art of sculpture. He went on and said that until now, the art creation not only has already taken most of his heart but is the greatest motivation that pushes him to move on because he believed that the art can make people and the world better. In his point of view, everyone shall access to art and this is as well as the goal he desired most to achieve in the arts.
“He wanted us as humans to think about why we are here.”
It is never easy to use the sculptures to embody the thinking of mysterious Tao philosophy. However, Richard said that the inspiration would always be with him wherever his mind went in the process of doing the art creation, took the creations of monkey series as an example.
The organizer has discussed the plan with him two years ago. He likes monkey so much that he said yes to the organizer without hesitation even under the condition of no idea at all. Then, he laid down and closed eyes to brainstorm how to work with this exhibition. What came to his mind first was that why he liked monkey so much? He figured out that it was because we are evolved from the same ancestors as the monkey and decided the theme of civil revolution.
After deciding the theme of the display, he further want to decide what he wanted to give the audiences through this exhibition? How could I do to guide people to think about it through my sculptures? Little by little, he came out the title of this exhibition “Civilization and The Monkey. Why We Are Here! Why Are We Here?” Richard hoped that his sculptures not only inspire and stimulate us to feel and promote our creativity, but also want the audiences to think about the meaning of “why are we here?”. The exploration in the development of human culture to bring out more positive influence to this world.
From Here To Infinity
A eureka moment made an artist embrace life’s twists and turns.
American sculptor Richard Zawitz, who is also known as the Tanglemaster, has a mission. A grand one, if you will. Ad that is “to change the course of history by teaching and propagation creativity.” he says. Taoism opened up the path for Zawitz to get into Asian culture, philosophy and art. He thinks Tao and infinity are related, just like brothers. and sisters, originating from the same source.
Some of his latest works, which have not been shown in public before – such as Infinite Man, Infinite Woman, Infinite Group, Infinite Touch,
Infinite Manifold and Alien Buddha – will grace the show. Zawitz sees a lot of violence, aggression and war in the world today. The so-called peacekeeping process has not been successful, he says.
He’s a gem trader turned toy entrepreneur and now sculptor, and from next week he’ll be a purveyor of positive vibes to Hong Kong shoppers. That’s the resume of artist Richard Zawitz, who will open an exhibition called Infinity and Tao in the IFC Mall in Central.
Zawitz believes the show, which features his signature large-scale stainless steel sculptures, will produce positive energy for the shoppers perusing luxury shops. “Things with curves and waves give positive energy,” he said at his loft-style studio and gallery in Aberdeen. “The curve is everywhere in space, science and nature. It’s the most ubiquitous energy form.” His art is heavily influenced by the philosophy of Taoism, which he first learned about in 1967 and has since embraced.
“If you believe in Asian philosophy, you will understand that certain objects emit positive energy and in Fung Shui, it’s well understood that thing with curves and waves give positive energy. “And aesthetically, it’s attractive.” Each sculpture has a story, Zawitz says. Part of the show at IFC will feature several three metre sculptures, including the artist’s Infinity Man and Infinity Women, which overlook a central object.
“Hopefully, for a moment, people will forget about spending money and experience art.” Zawitz said.
We are social beings, we can’t stand alone.” Zawitz said, He describes his works as” sculpturetainment” and confidently states his goal: “I will never be satisfied until every man, women and child on this planet feels and experiences the joy of the creative process.
Zen sculptor Richard X. Zawitz has been obsessing with creating his twistable work Tangle since 1690s. He has recently created large-scale Tangle sculptures, which were featured in his solo exhibition “Infinity Art” at IFC Mall. The American artist has been a Hong Kong resident for over 40 years. He sets up Infinity Gallery in Wong Chuk Hang and San Francisco and spends his time between the two cities. Zawitz graduated from the University of Hawaii with a major in fine arts sculpture and sub majors in Asian art history and Asian philosophy. Perhaps this is why he’s so fascinated with Asia and Hong Kong naturally and spontaneously, just like the birth of Tangle.
Decades of Pertinence
“I discovered my interest in entangled and twisty particles when I was still in my high school in 1967, so I started designing my very first Tangle model. Then I learned about art and Chinese Taoism during college and I planned to create a piece of work that cold express the philosophy of Taoism. But it wasn’t until my trip to Nepal in 1973 then I was inspired by the Tibetan infinite knot to create a work that can be twisted and manipulated into different shapes.” Zawitz, whom believes in Taoism, thinks Tao is the origin of everything on earth and that it is everywhere. It carries the same meaning of the Tibetan infinite knot, which represents infinite power. He therefore started to create this piece of work once he was back to the States and introduced to the world Tangle when he moved to Hong Kong in early 1980s. So what exactly is Tangle? Like Taoism; Tangle is everything and nothing –it could be toy, art, decoration, souvenir, accessory, education tool or could be none of the above. It all depends on our own interpretation. To Zawitz, it illustrates the concept of WU Wei in Taoism, which literally means non-action or non-doing.
Transmitting Positive Energy
Zawitz’s invention of Tangle products have sold over 100 million globally and were sold out at Wal-Mart after its launch in 2003. As the inventor of Tangle who enjoys the sweet taste of success, Zawitz has never forgotten about himself being an artist. He added, “Both inventor and artist work on creation.
If you wat to create good works, you have to throw away your linear thinking; you need to be creative and turn the impossibility into reality.” Zawitz applies theconcept of Tangle to his large-scale sculptures, which are collected by various public organizations including University of Southern California, Dragon Centre and JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong.
As the first exhibition of the ar tist’s world tour, Zawitz specially created several new creations for the Infinity Art exhibition, such as Infinite Man, Infinite Woman, Infinite Group, and Infinite Touch, only to mention a few. “Curve means luck and fortune Chinese culture. I hope my works are inspirable while bringing immense positive energy to the audience,”
Plaything with a twist leaps onto world
stage
His eyes alight with messianic fervor, his silver hair flowing to his shoulders, Richard X Zawitz expounded on why the Tangle, the handheld, twistable plaything he invented decades ago, is far more than just a whimsical, curvy toy.
It’s a manifestation of essential energy, a symbol of eternity, a boon to the human race, he said, as he showed off humansized Tangle sculptures at the South San Francisco headquarters of Tangle Creations.
“Over the years, I discovered I have some sort of magic object,” he said. “There’s no getting around it. What else could it be? How else could a twisty plastic noodle last 40 years in this world?”
Indeed, the Tangle has tapped into many trends while selling 250 million copies, according to the company. A chrome version was among the first art toys sold by New York’s MoMA. It has FDA endorsement as therapeutic for stress relief, hand therapy and smoking cessation. Michael Jackson posed for Italian Vogue wearing an unfurled 4-foot Tangle slung across his chest like a bandoleer. It got a boost from the national fascination with fidget toys. It’s a TikTok darling. And soon it will star in an animated series.
“It’s tactile, visual and very sensory,” said Chris Byrne, an independent toy consultant also known as the Toy Guy. “It’s endlessly fascinating when you play with it. It can be very meditative.”
Zawitz, 75, who exudes a buoyant energy, feels that now the pliable coil is on the cusp of an even bigger emergence onto the world stage, where it can help manifest peace through creativity.
Back in the flower- child days (“I’m a classic character out of the ’60s,” he says), Zawitz was a sculptor and student of Asian art and philosophy who became fascinated with circles, spirals, waves and curves. That led to his invention of the Tangle. It started out as a walnut-wood sculpture, 3-feet long when opened end to end, made of several 90-degree joints that could be manipulated.
“Nobody could take their hands off it,” he said. “I had an epiphany that I could make this thing for everybody.”
So, in 1980, he created a handheld Tangle out of plastic and a larger chrome Tangle sold at museum shops and high-end department stores. His dad ran a business buying and selling used hotel furniture at Fifth and Bryant in the city.
Zawitz, who had moved here from his native Massachusetts after college in Hawaii and several years traveling in Asia, worked there all day and then would stay up all night with a crew assembling Tangle pieces manufactured in China.
In 1989, the company behind Slinky became its distributor and sold 500,000 to Kmart. Mattel later licensed it for construction toys, although they failed to gain traction. McDonald’s distributed it with Happy Meals. Walmart showcased it at checkout lanes, selling 9 million. Zuru Toys, an aggressive new toy company based in Hong Kong, marketed it until a year ago.
Along the way, Zawitz had to fend off toy pirates who ripped off his designs.
“Fortunately, the gods were smiling,” he said. “My first year in business, I met a guy in Hong Kong who told me I needed a patent on my product in Taiwan, so I applied and got it. I was copied so much that I began getting copyrights, patents and trademarks all over the world.”
Now three generations of the Zawitz family — Richard, his son, daughterin-law and grandson — run the company in a remodeled old warehouse that is half art gallery for Zawitz’s sculptures and an impressive collection of Asian art. They’re adding new ideas like light-up balls and illuminated active wear. And there are lots of different Tangles in all sizes, textures and colors. Zawitz’s titles are Tanglemaster, sculptor and thaumaturgist, or magician.
“As someone who believes in etaphysical things, alchemical transformations, I turned plastic into gold,”
“My goal as an artist is to project more creativity to the world. I want to change the course of history with creativity and positive energy.”
