Platonic Solids

About the Exhibition

Grace DeGennaro explores the intersection of ancient wisdom and contemporary abstraction through her meticulous engagement with the five solids described by the Greek philosopher Plato—polyhedron shapes representing air, water, fire, earth, and the cosmos. Each painting is the same size and foundational composition, with rich variation in color, transparency, and layering. Collectively and individually, the series meditates on time, universal forms of order, and the luminous possibilities of color.

DeGennaro's methodical process unfolds in three distinct stages: a glowing ground of transparent color brushed with cold wax medium upon a linen surface, a central geometric form applied with stencil, and finally a delicate lattice of hand-painted dots. These painstakingly rendered dots not only render the shapes of the Platonic solids, but also create a visual rhythm that invites the viewer to slow down and attune to the passage of time.

With a sophisticated understanding of color theory, DeGennaro generates subtle optical vibrations between complementary hues, creating works that pulse with quiet energy. Ranging from fiery oranges to cool blues and earthy browns, the elemental associations provide both a conceptual framework and chromatic inspiration.

The perfect symmetry of Plato's solids has captivated philosophers, mathematicians, architects, and artists across cultures and millennia. Considered “sacred” geometry, their patterns have been posited to reveal divine or universal ordering principles. Through patient accumulation of marks and meticulous attention to form, DeGennaro blends a timeless visual vocabulary with her signature handling of materials—inviting us into a space where time expands and geometric precision meets artistic intuition.

In Conversation with Friday Arts

Friday Arts

Tell us about the Platonic Solids series.

Grace DeGennaro

The Platonic Solids are influenced by Plato's five solids: air, water, fire, earth, and the cosmos.

When I started thinking about his drawings, they were sort of a vocabulary and I decided to work with them to make this series. There are 24 paintings in the series and they are all 26 by 16 inches. It was a series that came together quickly and they were all made fairly close together. I was thinking about what each Platonic Solids symbolized and how the color palette would support that symbol and that shape.

The Platonic solids have captured the imagination of different cultures for millennia, from Euclid to Kepler and beyond. What inspired you to explore the forms?

I had heard of the Platonic solids, but when I first decided that I wanted to make a series about them, I was reading Robert Lawler’s book Sacred Geometry. That book has been a kind of a bible for me. I found this beautiful page with a grid of the Platonic solids. What drew me to them was not only that they were once considered the building blocks of the universe, but that each shape—the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron—represented one of the five elements and had other symbolic meanings.

I started in a very intuitive way. I had ordered a series of small canvases. And I was using the cold wax for the first time so I was very inspired by the medium. The series unfolded by thinking very simply about the shapes in relation to symbolism and color.

Can you give us a primer on each of the Platonic solids and their meanings?

The simplest shape is the tetrahedron, which is also a triangle. It has four faces, and it symbolizes fire and also the root or the stem. Second is the cube: it has its six sides, and the cube represents Earth and also fruit. Third one is the octahedron, which has eight sides and symbolizes air, and also the root and stem again. The dodecahedron has 12 sides and symbolizes the spirit and the cosmos. And the fifth platonic solid is the icosahedron, which has 20 facets and symbolizes water and blossom. I name them also by color and symbol so the whole narrative is right in the title of each of the paintings.

The shapes appear in nature as crystalline structures, viruses, even different kinds of species. Was that what resonated with you, these shapes being replicated in the natural world and across time?

I was more interested in the aspect of these shapes, where, for example, a triangle became three dimensional, and it was transparent. I was actually trying to make the shapes three dimensional in my paintings. I have for many years been anti-illusional in my work. I don't render things in a traditional way to create three dimensions, or the illusion of three dimensions. So I was really drawn to the idea that these shapes might have a sense of a three-dimensional form and to create it with just my dots. I knew they were ancient shapes, but I didn't think that much about them as volumetric shapes. They gave me a very simple and clear vocabulary to explore the color and the symbolism and that medium of cold wax.

You mentioned earlier this is the first time you were using the cold wax, which you now use to make your grounds. Can you speak about the material exploration?

Actually, I had used the cold wax when I was pregnant and I couldn’t use toxic materials like turpentine. I looked at some of those older paintings that I made in the 1980s and they were in pristine condition. So I knew that the cold wax was a medium that could last. And I thought it's such a clean way to work. I'm so conscious of the environment and how much paint I use. I don't like my paintings to have a lot of paint on them because the surface has more integrity when it has less paint. And I just don't want to waste paint or throw it into the sink or the trash.

When I opened that first can of wax, I just loved the smell. I loved the way it felt. When you mix the cold wax with the paint, it becomes very silky. So that was very exciting. That was definitely part of why this series just kind of took off. And before I knew it, I had made these twenty-some paintings in a very short period of time. They were pretty intuitive and based purely on symbol and color.

The series has very intentional, very vibrant and strong colors—how do you select them? We've seen sketchbooks where there are blueprints for each painting. Can you talk about some of those more surprising choices—for example, water is blue, but water is also green?

Each painting has a ground color and three overlapping circles with the vesica piscis as a very clear shape in each one. There's a lot of transparency and the colors basically reflect the ideas of earth, fire, water, air, and the cosmos.

Of course, you think water, you think blue, but one of the reasons I use green for water—and I actually continue to do so and have in the past—is that because I grew up on Long Island and spent a lot of time swimming in the Long Island Sound. The water was always green. Greenish blue, but that's how I think about it in my memory, being underwater and swimming and seeing green.

But back to how I start the colors, I do make a lot of notations. I love the idea of a blueprint that you mentioned, and I think the grounds often reflect the symbolic color. For example, fire would have an orangey red, pretty straightforward. But I was also thinking about using Alber's relational color theory. And so the minute I put down a really brilliant orange ground, I would look to see what a direct complementary color of that might be. I wouldn't necessarily use that direct complement, but somewhere close to that because I was looking for opticality. And then there's some interesting things happen with the transparency, laying one color over another, resulting in colors I never would have chosen, but looked beautiful.

How did you decide on shades of pink and purple for air?

That's magenta actually. I think the reason we have that magenta color for air is probably that I was exploring with the transparent colors on the grounds. And magenta is a really beautiful, strong, transparent color that really, you know, it covers really well. Some transparent colors are a little bit thinner. But the magenta is always really powerful and covers really well.

The ease of the way the colors work sometimes really affects me because if I'm trying to push a color to do something that it can't do, then it doesn't work, I abandon it. But magenta, that covers, it's transparent at the same time, and it's a beautiful color.

You often create lattices of geometric forms with beads. Here you it seems you are using beads to create the dimensionality of the Platonic Solids?

In the Platonic solids series, the shapes are more like dots than beads. They're very small. I scaled that down for the smaller canvas. Also, they’re smaller because I was trying to suggest a little bit more of dimension. If you drew a triangle with beads, it's much flatter. I felt as if these dotted lines were more diagrammatic, more suggestive of scientific illustrations or drawings, and somehow suggested volume more when they were small like that. I think that's one of the things that makes the Platonic solids series really work is those smaller dots. If I tried to do that on the larger scale, like the 34 by 34 or the 55 by 55, you wouldn't see it from five feet away. So I focused on the size of the dots. It was very delicate work. And I also focused on the color of the dots because when they're so small, they're liable to just disappear if there isn't a really high contrast between the dots and the ground. I used the alternating color of dots for opticality.

You like to set up rules to contain a series, do you give yourself permission to go outside of these imposed structures? How do you reconcile the rules with the more intuitive element?

There's an intuitive element, but you give yourself a structure, and then you let yourself go outside the structure. It's kind of like, when you give your kids a routine, but then you break it sometimes. And it's fabulous. When I give myself a set of structures, like with just the five platonic solids, it can keep you focused, but then you're allowed to—make it bigger, let things go around on the edges.

One of the places I got that idea from was seeing Louise Bourgeois prints at MoMA. She donated one example of every print she ever made. She would have five dry points that were exactly the same and then she would go into it and with hand addition add a shape, add a narrative, add a rope, a chair . . .

And that just seems to be the way I like to make work. I've got something that’s a resonant image for me, and let it unfold into a huge series.