Raphaël Zarka discovered the scientific manuscripts of Abraham Sharp while in Oxford. Sharp was an English 18th century astronomer whose treatise Geometry Improved became the subject of a new body of photographs and sculptures. In this document, Sharp draws infinite possible combinations that enable the making of a polyhedron from a wooden cube – the most complex figure allows a perfect form with 120 facets. Sharp's studies found their outlet in this manuscript, but had no particular function as such. In the same way as an artist obsessed with pure form, Sharp creates aesthetic objects, geometric sculptures.
By reproducing Sharp's drawing through an operation of pyrography onto oak beams, Raphaël Zarka seems to want to verify the scientist's theories. But the artist stops half-way since he only applies the tracing on the raw wooden form; it is up to the spectator to go a step further to obtain a perfect polyhedron. Over to imagination or perhaps to time which might end up following the tracings and felling the wood. As opposed to other works by Zarka, this is not a replica or a reproduction but rather an application, a manifestation, which, although incomplete, seems to have allowed something to emerge. Simultaneously enigmatic and discrete despite its imposing size, the two photographs of the Geometry Improved treatise can complement the group of work.