Angela Bulloch Pythagoras in a Bean Field, 2023

Pythagoras in a Bean Field is from a series of sculptures—assembled from modular shapes—that combine Angela Bulloch's interest in the logic of geometry and seriality with graphic and sculptural qualities. The surface of the vertically assembled rhomboid shapes creates an optical illusion of pushing and pulling planes, giving the work an almost abstract quality, shifting between two and three dimensions. The appearance of the sculpture shifts according to one’s point of view: from one side the irregular aspect catches the eye, while from another the impression of a certain vertical regularity prevails.

Conceived and designed within a digital program transposing notional Euclidian geometry into a three-dimensional sphere, the artist conjures up sculptures in a weightless space, allowing virtuality and reality to coexist, at the same time transferring major themes of Minimalism into the present.

The title refers to the apocryphal anecdote about the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras who, when chased by mortal enemies, refused to cross a fava bean field and thus was killed.