The Dance of the Siblings - The Dualism of Apollo and Artemis — Acrylic on wood panel, polystyrene, acid free paper by Arnaud Quercy

About This Artwork

The Dance of the Siblings sets two pre-Socratic conditions against each other across a single vertical surface. The right half holds Apollo and Artemis as twin material presence, three geometric elements that together stand for formed being. The left half holds the apeiron, Anaximander's unbounded ground from which all definite forms emerge. The composition asks what comes before form, and what form owes to its absence.

The work organizes warm beige passages on the left against cooler blue-grey surfaces on the right. The left field reads as continuous and undifferentiated, a wash of layered pigment over textured substrate without any geometric incident. The right field gathers three raised forms in low relief: a semi-circle near the upper portion, a partial circle and a triangle nested together toward the lower section. The dimensional surface comes from layering fabric, plaster, gesso, and acrylic paint over a polystyrene core. The forms cast soft shadows that shift with the light, marking them as material objects emerging from the painted ground.

The painting measures thirty by forty-two centimeters with a depth of three centimeters, mounted on wood panel. It belongs to the Myths and Legends series within the Spells and Magic collection, which translates Greek thought into contemporary geometric language. The work carries certificate of authenticity number 20240114-0002. It also functions as a prospective study, testing polystyrene as a sculptural substrate for future development.

The reframing through Anaximander shifts the mythological pairing into philosophical territory. The twin deities no longer balance each other across the vertical axis; they share one side, jointly representing the determined and the bounded. The empty left field carries its own positive content as the apeiron, the indeterminate source rather than mere absence. The vertical division becomes a meditation on origin: form arises from the formless, definite things from the indefinite ground.