Ex Nihilo (Cosmos) by Casey REAS

Ex Nihilo (Cosmos) is the latest work in Casey REAS’ Still Life series. The series draws on the forms and conceptual framework of the five Platonic solids: cube, tetrahedron, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron. Plato’s Theory of Forms is central to this lineage, shaping his understanding of truth, beauty, and knowledge. For Plato, the world grasped through the senses is not fully real, but an imitation of a higher, invisible realm of perfect, eternal, and unchanging Forms. Ex Nihilo (Cosmos) explores the dodecahedron, and future works will engage the remaining four solids. Ex Nihilo (Cosmos) connects Plato’s worldview to computer graphics, where images are generated ex nihilo—from code rather than physical materials. Forms are not represented directly, but instantiated through mathematical rules and procedural processes. What appears on screen is not a depiction of an object, but a series of Forms articulated through lines and resolved into pixels.