Dimensions outside of Space and Time, Unique in the Quantum Multiverse
From the very first time that I saw the art of Anna Salustru, I stopped because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I should not have been surprised because Crete produced and is producing so many artists and talents. However, here we see something unique, beyond description. Is it possible to have such a unique talent, an artistic creation outside of this world, in which one immediately sees the union of mathematics, multidimensional universe, beyond space-time? What I saw I could not believe, a completely simple artwork combining white curves on black background and at the same time an art with complexity and advanced as if her works are visiting us from the future.
As a physicist and painter at the same time, I realized that what we physicists learn by studying the quantum world, here in Anna’s painting we are presented as specific works of reality. I immediately thought of concepts of string theory, quantum physics, mathematical harmony, the coupling of geometry with numbers, I thought of the infinite multiverse. In other words, one sees an imaginary multiverse, the embodiment of quantum uncertainty with classical certainty, infinity uniting with the finite. I asked Anna, “do you know modern physics well?”. Smiling Anna gave me the message and I immediately realized, I remembered, that art touches universal truths that are not learned from books or lessons. The artist knows because her art comes from the inner world which is the same for everyone and at the same time so unique.
In her other works with wonderful colors that seem to come out of the world of dreams, we see another quantum reality, the combination of form with randomness, the existence side by side of particles with waves. Instead of a brush, she uses the dynamic pressure of the air, giving a perpetual motion, a fluidity that goes from a dream to a reality, from a cloud to an object. An agreement of color and movement, a movement that crosses many levels. Are the levels infinite? Are the universes infinite? Are the strings infinite, the curves? The small rectangular panels that make up the large panel, at the will of the observer, turn back and forth, creating a new panel, with just one movement. To put it another way, the spectator, the observer suddenly becomes the artist. How many such tablets are made with a change of a single small tablet? And what if two small tables change? What if three, four, fifteen, forty change? They are rather way more than exponential to exponential power, they are, rather infinite combinations, that’s what they are. Infinite dimensions, do they come from chaos to harmony, from emptiness to physical reality? Mathematics is expressed by art and vice versa, did not the Pythagoreans teach that?
The central point of Anna’s art is the experience, the participation of the observer. We know from modern science that participation is understood as the driving force of the quantum universe. In other words, according to quantum mechanics, we live in a participatory universe, experience reaches Awareness, which is the fundamental reality. We know that there are no two worlds, science and everyday life, there is only one world: the quantum world. This somehow comes out of Anna’s art. As I say in my books, the three Natural Laws apply in our daily lives, Awareness projects to our world as infinite in number of experiences, through the three fundamental natural Laws: Complementarity which is the expression of “yes and / or no”, that is, unity in differentiation. Recursion (or Universality) which is the expression “As here, so everywhere”, “In Heaven, as on Earth”. And Interactivity which is the expression “Everything is a process”, while in human reality “relationships and happiness” are directly connected. Looking at Anna’s works, I saw that they express all three of these Universal Laws. How? But since real art reflects Reality.
Other lessons we learn from quantum physics and see in Anna’s works: There is freedom on the part of the observer and freedom on the part of Nature, true freedom moves the world, art is reality. Our limits are created by the limitations of observation, by our mind. Anna’s art is beyond the mind, it puts us in meditation. But it definitely comes out of meditation, from insight, this is self-evident.
Menas C. Kafatos | Physicist, Philosopher, Author and Artist.