For the Love of Math!

For the Love of Math! was an art show that demonstrated how the vigor, beauty and pleasure of math infuses our lives, from traditional crafts to contemporary research and daily creativity.

It was presented by SUMM, hosted by Suzanne Zahr Gallery, and curated by Timea Tihanyi.

The show included 19 amazing artists using various media, including poetry, visual art, dance, mathematical visualization, digital games, and software.

Gallery Details

The exhibition ran from October 1 through November 24, 10-5pm or by appointment.

SZ Gallery is at 2441 76th Ave SE, Suite 160, Mercer Island, WA. Parking is available in the Aviara Apartments Visitor Garage, with the entrance via the driveway on the north side of the building.

Artists’ Reception

An opportunity to meet the artists at an Artists’ Reception was on Friday November 5 from 5-8pm.

You can RSVP here.

In this video, hear curator Timea Tihanyi talk more about some of the works on display. Information on all works can be found at SZ Gallery’s website.

We expect all guests to wear masks, and all those eligible (12 and older) to be fully vaccinated.

Curatorial Statement

For many years, I’ve been collaborating with mathematicians and inviting them to have conversations with me about what their process of creative research is like. As a visual artist myself, I have long been intrigued by forms that attempt to distill complexity to some form of universal essence, abstraction that gets its special flavor from the makers touch, visual metaphors that resemble both architectural and biological beings, and the algorithmic logic of iteration, which creates multiples by constantly taking apart and reconfiguring.

The collection of artworks in this exhibition presents the viewer with a diverse array of creative practices, from traditional art mediums, like painting, drawing and sculpture, to digitally generated two and three-dimensional works, participatory games, puzzles, poetry and dance. The invited artists all share a kind of visual sensibility, and they also share something else important: mathematical thinking. Whether they are mathematicians, whose cutting-edge research is aided by visualization, or math educators bringing complex mathematical concepts closer to all of us with playfulness and charm, or art/design professionals inspired by the rhythm of abstraction, each exhibiting artist’s work explores an exciting and immersive universe. Their toolkits and intensions for giving form to an idea may be completely different, but each professes the artist’s passion for a healthy sort of exercising of the gray matter in the brain, some form of mathematical thinking.

- Timea Tihanyi