Dome Wood
Dome Wood (b. 1974) is an Australian-born artist and philosopher who has been living in Brussels since 2015. Having left Australia in 1997, it was not until 2000, when he had moved to Berlin, that Dome Wood (aka Dominic Wood) became active in the European art scene. Since then, he has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries throughout Europe. His most recent solo show, Pre-Human Continuum, took place at Waldburger Wouters (Brussels). In 2021, he participated in two group shows: Conscious Becoming at Tatjana Pieters (Ghent) and Small Sculptures at Michel Rhein (Brussels). He also participated in the 6th Prague Biennale, FLOW (2013), European Tribal Wars, Armee Museum Ingolstadt, Germany (2015), and L'Amour Héroique, MUBA Eugéne Leroy, Tourcing, France (2012). In 2020, he co-founded the exhibition platform The Agprognostic Temple, co-curating and producing nine exhibitions, including "Visions of the Underworld," which was the opening exhibition to the 2023 European Cultural Capital in Elefsina,Greece.In 2022, he published his first book, "Egothávma," which led to the online exhibition Egothávma at Entmt.art. Currently, Wood is involved in his latest project, the establishment of the 4th Space Meditation Centre in Schaerbeek, Brussels.
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Dome Wood's artistic practice and philosophy revolve around a profound fascination with archaic elements and the primordial essence of existence. From the outset of his career, he has been driven to confront the challenges of painting at its core, seeking to express the very foundations of human expression. This journey has taken him on an ontological quest, probing the fundamental aspects of the universe itself. Since 2017, Wood has integrated diagrams into his artistic language. This culminated in a series of eight paintings in 2018, which prominently underscored his interest in universal principles. These artworks move between the boundary of explanation and art, offering a distinctive vantage point and potentially even a resolution to the enigmatic measurement problem in quantum mechanics. His explorations further extended to the realms of four-dimensional space and its interrelation with consciousness, subjects that he elaborated upon in his book, “The Egothávma."
Notably, a pivotal turning point emerged concerning his paintings, where the imperative of conveying ontological concepts through the very form of painting eclipsed the need to elucidate these ideas solely through the medium. In doing so, a transformation occurred, leading to an evolution in the artworks. Influenced by the notion of "mummifying" inspired by his Egyptian background and his work in sculpture, Wood began to imbue the paintings with this approach as well. Consequently, the weaving of the paintings took on new significance, transitioning from a mere surface to a "hyper-surface," where the continuous interlacing from front to back acquired a Möbius strip-like quality. This configuration came to symbolize four-dimensional space, and the movement inherent in the weave came to express a distinct ontological disposition, akin to the abstraction observed in indigenous painting. These developments are particularly evident in Wood's two paintings, known as "Tomb-painting 1" and "Tomb-painting 2.”
It is not just in the painting itself that Dome Wood seeks to innovate and transform from the ground up, but also his approach to pricing his artwork. He views the exchange between the artist and the buyer as a transaction based on the inherent objectiveness that both parties value. Therefore, the price of the artwork comes to represent not only its market value but also the value it expresses. For instance, in his "Tomb Painting" series, the attached value is transcendental, represented by the mathematical constant pi, reflecting the artwork's transcendental significance. In his quantum mechanics painting series, the objective value is tied to Planck's constant, which is crucial to quantum mechanics. As a result, Planck's constant becomes an integral part of the artwork's market value, emphasizing its profound meaning. This unique pricing approach places value on the artwork's significance to both the artwork itself and its impact on the viewer, elevating the exchange of value to a meaningful and symbolic level.