Terrifying and Glorious. I See Angels.

Some words on Entfaltung, a new body of work by Harm van den Dorpel

There are moments in these works when I feel a little bit terrified. As though some mathematical angel is standing before me, attempting to inform me of the secrets of existence itself, while simultaneously refusing to let me in.

I mean the angels of biblical imagination, those impossible beings of swirling rings, wings, and countless eyes. Not the sweet, reassuring cherubic kind, but celestial and incomprehensible. Something that appears to possess a higher order of knowledge, and whose beauty is almost too much to bear.

I should probably disclose that I might be biased. I am Harm’s girlfriend, and I did suggest he look at the drawings of Emma Kunz, whose work has inspired this series. But I also know that I have a very particular aesthetic, and certain desires for the kinds of experiences I want to have when engaging with art that I love. And Entfaltung is hitting those points for me.

There’s something about mathematics that I’ve always found sublime. I’ve had a bit of a crush on math for its truthfulness, the divine simplicity of this + this = this. Geometry, balance, harmony. That kind of truth is almost terrifying. It possesses a power that doesn’t require our participation or understanding.

Recently, listening to Sarah Davachi play the organ at Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, I experienced a similar sensation. There were moments when the tones became so immense, so particular, sometimes wildly dissonant with underlying tones and dimensionality, that I felt I may have reached the edge of my capacity to receive sound. I had to surrender. I remember thinking, Ohhh, this is what angels sound like.

Not simply pretty or pleasing. Rather, awe-inspiring, even frightening.

A little peephole into that impossible vastness.

And I wanted to stay.

With Entfaltung, I sometimes feel precisely this way: outside peering towards vastness. And then, an angle shifts, a colour glides, the topography changes—I am rapturously drawn in, invited and enveloped into another dimension, another world. In this rotation, in this iteration, a word like truth slips into my mind; a small, simple word, just for a moment. And then… it shifts and morphs again.

That’s the thing, there’s never quite enough time to stay long enough to formulate a rational sentence. Instead, there’s this ongoing succession of small revelations, each revolving into the next.

The works follow a specific rhythm: three turns and a morph. Three rotations reveal different perspectives of a form, and then it unfolds into something else. Sometimes the transformation is subtle. Sometimes it’s extraordinary. A doorway appears. A light at the end of a hallway. Maybe resembling many geometric angles like arms reaching toward you. And you’ve arrived somewhere new, just for a beat and then the rotations begin again.

Three plus one. I love this structure. Three is the Unity of One and the Duality of Two. It represents synthesis, expansion, creation. And after three rotations comes the fourth movement: the transformation. It’s almost ceremonial, a ritualistic repetition that contains the possibility of endless surprise.

You can intervene, of course. Pause the movement, zoom in, spin it around. But I find enormous pleasure in simply allowing the works to follow their unfolding pace.

These are living drawings, they are computed in real time. This means nothing is pre-rendered, and nothing repeats. Yet each work is synchronised across viewers. I could be looking at number 19, and so could friends in another timezone, and my daughter on her iPad in the other room, and we’d all be witnessing the same transformation at the same time.

That’s to sat, you don’t initiate the work’s existence by looking at it, you don’t switch the power switch. You’re simply invited to engage with its ongoing iterations. The work continues its unfolding whether or not I’m there to witness it. I can leave, come back, glance over at my screen, and discover the entirely unexpected.

And the longer I spend with them, the more they surprise me.

I have one of my favourites open on my screen as I write this. Number 12, a distant relative, to my eyes, of Alpha, the first work in the series. I remember seeing Alpha projected in a gallery in Munich and being completely overwhelmed. I’d already seen it on a computer, but there, made of light upon a wall, I encountered it anew. So tender, so soft, almost humble, and when I could take the whole piece in, it was suddenly, impossibly beautiful.

Number 12 has a related palette, but with these shimmering shards and slivers of colour, some outlined, others appearing almost suspended between the lines. It’s like the aurora borealis has entered some fractal dimension. It’s ethereal and sweet, and the longer I look, the more it reveals.

—By the way, I have another piece (11) now open and it’s just done something I’ve never seen before. A form is shrinking to almost nothing before it explodes back into existence.

What was that? Do other ones do that too? What are the limitations?!?

I’ve spent so much time looking at these works, and still, I have no idea what might happen next.

In some of them I see tarot cards, specifically the Thoth deck of Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris, with its extraordinary geometric lines and colours. There are echoes of the Tree of Life, the angles and aspects of an astrological chart, and all manner of mystical geometries. The references seem almost endless.

I sent a little video of my computer screen whilst one of the pieces (15) was moving to a friend with the message, “You might enjoy the way this shimmers.”

She replied, “I want to live inside of that.”

And I know exactly what she means. They can be little worlds you find yourself looking into, rather than simply looking at.

Sometimes I find myself thinking of the mysterious blue box in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, as though another dimension might burst open, shattering reality. Sometimes I’m at the controls of a spaceship. In another piece, I find myself in a deconstructed, abstracted world of Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle, where the gorgeousness of the colours, lines, and angles is playful, modern, almost childlike even.

And sometimes the pieces hover around faces, or masks. I sent another friend video of 21: “One of Harm’s new pieces is giving me MF DOOM vibes,” I wrote.

He immediately replied, “Damn, now that’s f*ing sick-looking. Literally some of the coolest shit.”

Which, frankly, is another perfectly reasonable response.

What fascinates me is that Harm hasn’t drawn each of these moments into existence. He’s created the conditions for them to happen. A system of mathematical relationships and possibilities, within which things emerge that he hasn’t individually prescribed.

I find this astonishing.

It reminds me of nature, perhaps zoomed in and sped up. Geometry isn’t necessarily the opposite of the organic. Look closely enough at the natural world and geometry is everywhere.

And there’s something deeply familiar about the pleasure of witnessing these transformations.

I feel it when I look at the trees in spring, suddenly flowering, or in autumn when a few sunny days have turned the leaves an impossible red. Oh, look at you. This is what you are now.

I feel it with children, with animals, and in relationships. That wonderful moment of encountering the familiar and discovering it now existing in a way you hadn’t anticipated.

There’s a particular kind of relationship in which you don’t require the other to remain the same in order to recognise it.

And somehow, spending time with these works is like that.

Some are more conventionally beautiful, or at least beautiful to my eyes. Others are a little more hardcore. Spending time with each is a bit like having different dance partners. You begin to recognise their palette, their quality, the things they’re inclined to do. And even a piece I might initially think isn’t for me can reveal something extraordinary.

I love symbols and the languages we use to interpret them. The esoteric systems I work with have their structures, their rules, their finite vocabularies. There are seventy-eight cards in a tarot deck, and 456,456 possible arrangements of just three cards. Include reversals, and we’re already in the millions. How many stories might be told with such a seemingly limited language?

But there’s also something wonderfully liberating about not having to make meaning at all.

About encountering beauty and the unpredictable, and simply being astonished.

Perhaps that’s part of why these works feel so alive. They continually exceed whatever I think I’ve understood about them. And knowing that no moment will ever repeat, that whatever I’ve just witnessed has already disappeared into another possibility, makes the experience all the more precious.

After Harm showed me the collection, all assembled and ready to go, I had this wonderful sensation that each of the works was a little creature.

Little sigils that had been created and had somehow acquired a life of their own.

I make sigils myself, and I think of them as concentrated forms of intention, symbols that contain movement and possibility. They have jobs to do. They’re messengers, sentinels, sometimes spells.

And I can’t help imagining these works in a similar way. Soon they’ll be released into the world, making their way to other people, each carrying something that may only become apparent in the encounter.

Perhaps someone will acquire one simply because they find it aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps something else will happen. I like the possibility that a work might arrive in someone’s life carrying something they didn’t know they were looking for.

And perhaps what surprises me most about Entfaltung is the freedom I feel in its presence.

Even when the forms appear dissonant, even when they seem almost aggressive, there’s something triumphantly joyful about the experience.

The joy of being surprised. Of not knowing. Of watching something become something else, and finding yourself delighted all over again.

There’s something so wonderfully alive about it.

And what a joy that is to experience.