Baryonic Sculpture

Baryonic is made in collaboration with my good friend and beautiful artist Irina Laird, from Calgary, Alberta, who conceived and made the glass-fusing part. I had it in my studios for a few years revisiting it now and then without being able to recognize from what larger scheme is it part of. I thought I’d extrapolate from it at first, I often do that. Then I realized that the work had a firm, round personality. Its concept suggests something of organic nature, a microscopic image perhaps. So, instead of incorporating it in a larger vertical panel, I gave it a role that I thought it wonderfully fits Irina’s original vision. Thus it became the base of our joint creation. The concept of a microscopic image is what guided me to what if finally became. Here is now, my part of the fable. In quantum mechanics, the term “baryonic matter” refers to the familiar material in the Universe. It’s the stuff that makes the atoms of my fingernails, the yoke of an egg, the mantle of the Earth, the Sun, the nebulas, and all that it is generally detectable in one way or another. This “ordinary matter”, which once we thought it to be the sole constituent of the Universe, in fact it only counts for 5% of it. The rest is dark matter, dark energy, and gravitational energy. Scientists were baffled when they discovered that all this sums up to a zero-energy Universe. No one is sure what that means, but it looks like one doesn’t need energy to make an universe. How peculiar! Then people realised that this finding brings back into discussion an 18th century thought formulated by polymath GW Leibniz, which demanded an explanation for why there is something rather than nothing in the Universe. Why there is anything at all? What caused it? Back in time, on the same topic Aristotle thought that everything has a cause, and that an infinite regress of causation leads to something of an “uncaused cause”. The question “why” stays forever with us, and not only in our culture, but in the kitchen, when the inquisitive child asks his/her parents “why” after “why” until they get tired and quit the game. As for the answer, some people say “God”, others “Big Bang”, while others say “there is no ‘why’; what is it just is”. Whoever is right (not that we may ever know necessarily) my artistic endeavour calls me to stop and contemplate the grandeur of this ultimate question about the Universe.

Sculpture:Glass on Glass

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:22 W x 11 H x 22 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.