To start with a blank canvas is to start with nothing – to step into the space of an empty void. Though bounded by the canvas edges in two dimensions – the picture plane – this space has the potential to open into infinite illusory dimensions through the agency of diagrammatic line. As lines meet, repeat, converge and diverge, hinging back and forth around a set of angles, the sublime mathematical beauty of Geometry opens into the magical space of the soul as it unfolds all the way to infinity, dancing an endless set of relations that always differ, performing a miraculous form of repetition that repeats only to produce difference and diversity, following in effect the principle of evolution of organic life.

This form of repetition is also the defining feature of Penrose tiling and Persian Girih tile-work of the middle ages, where it produces patterns that expand endlessly towards infinity, tricking the eye with their irregularly regular repetition. Daneshmand has mapped these – and other – patterns onto his canvases where they provide the starting point for an introjection of the irrational in the form of the human hand and the unruly behaviour of matter. There is repetition, there is difference, and then as lines waver, forms flutter, globs of paint adhere or not, there is disruption.

Chaos is but order deconstructed. Infinity, like the soul, is irrational. Infinity embodies a reconciliation of opposites, oscillating in permanently balanced imbalance. For darkness to exist, there must be light. For Gilles Deleuze, ‘Representation is a site of transcendental illusion’.1 But illusion is as true as truth, even if it can only express a singular, partial or fractured truth, the fullness of which, being infinite, can barely be imagined. In Daneshmand’s paintings we see a stillness that moves eternally, regularly irregularly, to the rhythm of all the ever-mutating forms and structures of the Cosmos. Light plays on iridescent surfaces; crystals unfold like a sequence of boxes; architectural elements rotate about a central vortex, asymmetrically symmetrical, sliding together and apart. The duality of the singularity has no beginning or end. For every truth there are infinite equal and opposite truths.

Elizabeth Manchester, London 2017. Elizabeth Manchester is an artist and writer whose thinking and making synthesize the poetic with the practical.

Bijan Daneshmand Born in Tehran, Iran, 1958. Based in London, is engaged in the fine arts and has a strong interest in drama; acting in UK and international film and tv projects. He studied at Kings College London in civil engineering as his first degree, and later obtained an MA Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Arts, London. Infinite Thruths was curated by Ana Carolina Rodrigues, an artist and curator whose practice explores the notions of physical presence and the intangible and their possible connections.