ARTIST STATEMENT

Mathematical Singularity of Beauty
Kirill Arkadyev
November 2025 – ongoing

I work at the boundary where a finite biological object asymptotically approaches zero and, through this disappearance, gives birth to an infinite aesthetic event — a singularity.
The series “Singularity of Beauty” is an ongoing investigation into the moment when decay, entropy, and controlled human intervention collide to rupture the visible world and generate a new, non-representational order.

Method: Asymptotic Ritual

A chosen organic system (bird, bouquet, insect colony, fungal network) is placed on a prepared surface and deliberately abandoned to natural forces — heat, humidity, insects, gravity, time.
During a fixed ritual period (7 days in the current cycle), the object decays following an exponential law analogous to f(t) = a·e⁻ᵏᵗ. The artist is absent; only documentation occurs.
At t → ∞ (practically: when the biological object approaches zero), the artist re-enters as a second asymptotic operator. Selective pigment application, removal of material, and layering transform the residue into a visual limit — a singularity point where the initial object has vanished, yet infinite meaning emerges.
The final state is neither representation nor abstraction; it is the frozen event of the limit itself.

Core Principles

Decay is not a theme; it is the first author.
Time is treated as a physical material with measurable half-life.
Human intervention functions as a controlled perturbation that forces the system past its natural equilibrium into aesthetic infinity.
The resulting image is a palimpsest of two incompatible temporalities: biological time (unstoppable) and artistic time (intermittent, intentional).
The “demon” is not a depicted figure but the mathematical event of the singularity: the instant when order, passing through zero, becomes infinite and alien.

Conceptual Framework

The works operate at the intersection of:
– Process-based art and ritual performance (Beuys, Mendieta, Goldsworthy)
– Thermodynamics and asymptotic mathematics (Prigogine’s dissipative structures, limits, and singularities)
– Dark ecology (Morton) and the aesthetics of radical plasticity
– The horror and beauty of uncontrolled metamorphosis
Each piece in the series is a new experiment in the same differential equation:
initial biological order → exponential decay → deliberate perturbation → aesthetic singularity
Current and Future Investigations
– Variation of ritual duration (3, 7, 21, 49 days)
– Variation of initial objects (avian, floral, fungal, marine)
– Introduction of additional operators (fire, submersion, microbial cultures)
– Translation of the limit into different media (large-scale canvas, resin embedding, time-lapse film, sound installation)
The singularity is not a metaphor.
It is the measurable, repeatable moment when a finite living system, through its own disappearance, generates infinite aesthetic intensity.
From a bird, from a bouquet, from a handful of insects — something escapes the cycle of life and death and becomes pure event.

At present, the series comprises two completed cycles (“Mathematical Singularity of a Bouquet”, 2025 and “Bird → ∞”, 2025). Further iterations are in development..

The demon is never finished; it only approaches the limit.

Kirill Arkadyev
Thailand, November 2025 – present