ANGELA BULLOCH

The title, Animal Vegetable Mineral, refers to the three general categories comprising the totality of what exists in the world. As such the exhibition experience is equally all-encompassing: visitors enter a darkened space in which light and sound are programmed to shape the way the works are encountered. As illumination shifts from one work to the other and the video plays in an alternating rhythm, a specially arranged ambient audio-scape of synthetic noises surrounds us.

Installed in loose groupings in the exhibition space, the new sculptures are constructed from one to six modular elements based on pentagonal shapes. The surface of the vertically assembled geometric modules—dodecahedrons, meaning each is made of 12 pentagonal flat faces—creates an optical illusion of pushing and pulling planes. In bright colours and distinct materials, the works range in height from 50 cm to 300 cm. Each material—the sculptures are made from Corian, MDF, or stainless steel—has distinct properties that give the colours and surfaces of the works specific characteristics, modulating light and colour.

A group of three Pixel Boxes, cuboid units programmed to emit light, includes modular pentagonal sculptural elements placed on top. Each work shines in one colour: Canary in yellow, Caramba in blue and Cardinal in red. Ursa Major Minor and Aquila Winter Quartile, two works from Bulloch’s Night Sky series, wrap around the gallery’s existing floor-to-ceiling pillars. The dark blue felt panels with numerous programmed LED lights, placed according to the pattern of a galaxy or constellation, effectively make the pillars disappear. The sight of the spangled sky is reassuringly familiar, yet also holds a mystery as these particular constellations do not appears as they would from an Earth-based perspective.

A digital animation entitled Audio Visual Mineral is projected onto the wall. It mirrors the physical exhibition in the gallery as its virtual double, replete with a visiting cat avatar. A large-scale wall painting in the exhibition, formed from a pattern of pentagonal shapes stretching along an entire wall and across a corner, also appears doubled in the digital animation.

By emphasising the changing conditions in the exhibition space, Angela Bulloch draws attention to the indebtedness of our perception to specific environments, cultural landscapes and image worlds. As light and sound shift, and architectural markers seem to disappear, her sculptures foreground our inclination for recognising the familiar and classifying the alien. Animal Vegetable Mineral seeks to introduce an awareness of the multitude of realities that can exist at the same time, bringing into question our sense of the stability of any single state of being: real, virtual, or otherwise.

Angela Bulloch was born 1966 in Rainy River, Ontario, in Canada. She studied at Goldsmiths, University of London. The artist lives and works in Berlin.

In 1997, Bulloch was nominated for the Turner Prize and in 2005, for the Berlin-based Preis der Nationalgaleriefür junge Kunst. In 2011, she received the Vattenfall Contemporary Art Prize, Berlin, as well as the Art Prize of the city of Wolfsburg.

Since 2018 Bulloch has been Professor of Time-based Media at the HfbK in Hamburg.

Recent solo presentation include: Angela Bulloch. Heavy Metal Stack of Six, Serralves Museum, Porto(2019); Anima Vectorias, MAAT, Lisbon (2019–2020); Angela Bulloch, Omi International Arts Center, The Fields Sculpture Park, Ghent, NY (2017); Considering Dynamics & The Forms of Chaos, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah (2016).

Among public collections that hold Bulloch’s work are: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Fondation LouisVuitton, Paris; Le Consortium, Dijon; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Estuaire, Nantes; Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn;The Schaufler Foundation, Sindelfingen; Lenbachhaus, Munich; Kunstmuseum, Bonn; Berlinische Galerie,Berlin; Sammlung Städtische Galerie, Wolfsburg; De Pont, Tilburg; Helga de Alvear, Madrid; Collection Ringier,Zürich; Collection Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, UAE; Tate, London; Arts Council Collection, London; Goss MichaelFoundation, Dallas, Texas, and Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.