Chris Reilly improves, corrects nature: Referring to the crystalline mineral pyrite, which usually appears with irregularities and striations, he eliminates every 'error' with mathematical accurateness. Pyrite, also known as Fool's Gold due to many miners mistaking it for the real thing, attracted and deceived them through its golden sheen. In fact this iron sulphide is nearly worthless; it is commercially used in the paper industry.

Chris Reilly's 3D-cardboard models and 2D-prints are meticulous adaptations of natural forms.

"The 3D models, these prints and sculptures are based on the 'perfect' crystalline forms of pyrite - singular, regular polyhedra, they lack the irregularities in shape and departure from form characteristic of the real crystals. Mathematically and symmetrically, their forms are more 'pure' than their natural counterparts. These aspects of order, logic, and predictability are inherent even in the techniques of 3D modeling, scripting, and digital output used to produce these objects," Chris Reilly explains.

Symmetry, logic are improved, but the specific beauty, the mirroring gleam of pyrite lacks.

"This is not meant to convey on my part any lack of appreciation for the natural forms of pyrite crystals (or for nature or real things in general). In fact, I find real pyrite crystals quite beautiful. And though the objects I've produced - while possessed of their own desirable formal qualities - are cleaner and more precise in a mathematical sense, they are, at the same time, literally flat and hollow. They lack the golden sheen, the natural striations, the fascinating blends of crystalline shapes that the real things possess."

Complex crystalline structures, modelled in cardboard, light and hollow, deliberately showing the material they consist of, or flat construction drawings: They both reveal the (chemical) bonds, the crystal lattice, which keeps together the whole formation. Singular forms 'glued' together to octahedrons, to dodecahedrons, to an entity.

Polyamory: No dyad, no triad, but a whole bunch of single elements, crystals or humans, having a complex relationship, loving each other without preferential treatment. But is this functioning? Or is polyamory an abstract construction?

Fool's Gold/Polyamory: An ambivalent approach to relationships. Illusion or reality, vision or critique?

"Instead of staking my claim on one side or the other, the real vs. the abstract, deeds vs. thoughts, mind vs. body, art vs. nature etc., I am content to sit on the fence and appreciate both for what they are. Perhaps I am weak-willed, indecisive, and ambivalent. More likely, in my opinion, perfect abstractions have a place and an application within the physical world, just as nature, for all its 'flaws', supports these abstractions with the very physical framework it provides."

CHRIS REILLY, Chicago-based artist, received his BFA from New Media, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL in 2006. Since 2003 he had several group and solo exhibition in the US. Chris Reilly lives and works in Chicago.

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