The Institute For Figuring is delighted to announce our return to Los Angeles with the exhibition Hyperbolic: Reefs, Rubbish and Reason at Art Center College of Design’s Williamson Gallery. This meticulously detailed, labor-intensive installation, hand-built on-site and marks the culmination of the Institute’s six-year long investigation into the nexus of hyperbolic space, oceanic ecology and community art practice. Featuring a core collection of the IFF’s most exquisite Crochet Reefs the exhibition also includes a site-specific Coral Forest, a giant plastic-trash Midden, and a mathematical Play Tank. At once hyper-real, super-real, and unreal, Reefs, Rubbish and Reason is a domestically inflected meditation on the mystery of mathematics, the evolution of life, the well-spring of human creativity, and the environmental crisis confronting marine ecosystems.

Bringing together themes the IFF has been exploring since its inception — public engagement with mathematics allied with participatory creative practice — the exhibition showcases the power of material play. Everything in this show is hand-made, yet at the same time embodying theoretical ideas. From the seeds of a mathematical concept, a fantastical universe has been spun into being. What began humbly in Highland Park in 2005 culminates now in this wide-ranging exhibition in Pasadena after a journey of discovery that has taken us from Chicago, New York and London, to Scottsdale, Dublin, and the Smithsonian in Washington DC.

Framed by reefs and reason, rubbish commands the center-stage of the exhibition. Anchoring the space of the Gallery’s main room is The Midden, an installation compiled from all the domestic plastic trash IFF directors Margaret and Christine Wertheim used and accumulated during a four year period from February 2007 to February 2011. In the same gallery is the latest incarnation of the Toxic Reef, our all-plastic reef, displayed here in an atoll-like configuration and featuring video-tape kelps by Christine Wertheim, Evelyn Hardin, and Julie Tomiko Smith. Highlights of the installation include a cluster of plastic-bag tube-worms by Gina Caciolo, and a perennially superb grove of blue New York Times plastic-bag anemones by our superlative LA contributor Clare O’Callaghan. Above the Toxic Reef floats a flock of jellyfish crafted from plastic water bottles by Pasadena contributor Vanessa L. Garcia.

In the second room of the exhibition is a site-specific installation of a giant Coral Forest, comprising a collection of towering sculptures up to 10 feet high. Huge, voodoo-like objects, each composed from hundreds of crochet coral pieces, these organic sculptures were grown in situ. Just as the evolution of life on earth has had a vertical trajectory from ocean the floor towards the sky, so we at the IFF aim towards the heavens. In center of the forest is Dr Axt’s remarkable new work Requium Reeficus, made in response to the BP oil spill. This is the fourth work in Dr Axt’s “Reefer Madness” series. The IFF is awed by the power of the doctor’s oeuvre and her continuing inventiveness with color and form.

The exhibition included a mathematics “Play Tank” exploring the geometry of hyperbolic space. On a 20 foot wide blackboard are diagrammatic explanations of Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic geometries, showing the ways in which the three different types of surface can be “tessellated” or tiled. As one enters the room, the first thing a visitor encounters is a large paper model of hyperbolic space constructed using the “hyperbolic soccer-ball” technique invented by mathematician Keith Henderson. Visitors can engage interactively by making a hyperbolic model of their own. Paper instructions, scissors and tape are provided at two sit-down play-stations.

Framing the play-stations are a series of crocheted hyperbolic manifolds by Dr. Daina Taimina, the Cornell University mathematician and inventor of hyperbolic crochet. Dr. Taimina’s models cast projective shadows onto the Euclidean floor. Displayed in a vitrine at the far end of the room, are a further series of Taimina’s hyperbolic models demonstrating mathematical principles inhering within this unique geometry. The Play Tank also includes a large red model by local Pasadena contributor Myrna Gutierrez.

In the “Beautiful Holy Jewel” room at the opposite end of the gallery, a selection of the IFF’s classic crochet reefs are displayed, showcasing fine and delicate works by our beloved Contributors. On display are the Cold Water Reef,  the Bleached Bone Reef , and the Branched Anemone Garden. In a series of small vitrines around the walls are miniature “Pod Worlds” featuring extremely skilled pieces by Nadia Severns, Arlene Mintzer, Sue Von Ohlsen, and Rebecca Peapples. In this room also hangs Helen Bernasconi’s Hyperbolic Sea Serpent and a large coral pod by the Latvian Reef crafters, curated by Tija Viksna in Riga.

In the “Aisle of Feminine Creativity” a series of small wall-mounted vitrines showcases works by some of our most exceptional Contributors. Opposite are framed letters and diagrams sent to the IFF by Contributors along with their crochet pieces. These letters constitute our Holy Document Collection, displayed here in an aisle-like configuration culminating in an “altar” on which stood a large pink paper-model of hyperbolic space.

Aisle of Feminine Creativity – Contributor Credits:

Case 1: Fluorescent corals by Ildiko Szabo. Case 2: Orange plastic-bag coral piece by Christine Wertheim. Case 3. JellyYarn coral sculpture by Kathleen Greco, with orange crocheted mathematical sequence by Heather McCarren. Case 4. Beaded jellyfish by Vonda N. McIntyre. Case 5. Staghorn corals by Mieko Fukuhara. Case 6. Painted seascape on used, plastic takeout container by Alecia Escott and plastic bin-liner jellyfish by Margaret Wertheim. Case 7. Knitted wire sea creatures by Anita Bruce, and Diatom book by Sarah Simons.

Hyperbolic: Reefs, Rubbish and Reason was curated by Margaret and Christine Wertheim with assistance from Anna Mayer and Jemima Wyman.

The IFF also thanks the Pasadena Crochet Meetup group for contributions from the local Pasadena community, plus Williamson Gallery director Stephen Nowlin and his superb install crew.

This journey would not have been possible without the amazing group of people who have contributed works to the project in its various manifestations and we are delighted to showcase here pieces by our most skilled and talented Contributors.