When I was a child, my mother taught me never to look at the Sun. But when I was six, I did it anyway...
A quote from Darren Aronofsky’s film Pi
At first glance, it may seem trite to quote The Four Books of Architecture—the canonical work of the great Andrea Palladio, which shaped the course of world architecture for nearly five centuries. Trite, perhaps, and outdated. Yet it is difficult to argue with his assertion that “the most beautiful and most perfect forms, from which all others derive their proportions, are the circle and the square.”
His famous Villa Rotonda in Vicenza, much like another iconic Renaissance building—the villa of Andrea Mantegna in Mantua—is, in essence, a meditation on the quadrature of the circle. This ancient geometric problem asks one to construct a square equal in area to a given circle using only a compass and a straightedge. For centuries, the finest minds wrestled with this puzzle, all in vain. Finally, in 1882, the German mathematician Ferdinand von Lindemann (perhaps an ancestor of Till, who knows?) proved that the problem is impossible to solve, owing to the transcendental nature of the number π (pi).
At this point, it is important to acknowledge the mystical and philosophical dimension of this geometric paradox, particularly in light of the symbolic meaning traditionally attributed to the two figures. In Christianity—and not only there—the circle is associated with truth, perfection, eternity, the celestial realm, the Kingdom of Heaven; the square, by contrast, symbolizes order, wholeness, materiality, and the earthly world. Consequently, the union of the circle and the square, or the transformation of one into the other, signifies the connection between heaven and earth and refers to a fundamental religious doctrine according to which “the invisible heavenly world and the visible earthly world are united in God as their common creator.”
One might therefore suggest that the ambition to solve the quadrature of the circle carried within it something almost blasphemous—a challenge to the divine itself. All the better, then, that it turned out to be a dead end for the human intellect.
As a result, the quadrature of the circle became a metaphor for the futile search for truth, for attempts to attain perfection in an imperfect world, to transcend the limits of sensory experience. The number π acquired a dubious reputation as a key to the mysteries of the universe and is now perceived almost as an alchemical symbol.
It is no coincidence that π—the sixteenth letter of the ancient Greek alphabet—gave its name to Darren Aronofsky’s cult film about Max Cohen, a paranoid schizophrenic and brilliant mathematician who seeks a universal pattern in stock market fluctuations. He discovers a mysterious 216-digit number and, in the process, descends into madness. He becomes convinced that the sequence generated by his computer contains the true name of God. His salvation from insanity comes in the form of a drill driven into his own temple.
Throughout the film, the protagonist repeatedly utters the phrase that serves as the epigraph to this manifesto. As one might guess, “looking at the Sun” is a metaphor for the pursuit of truth—which is also God. Cohen believes he has finally seen it and is punished for his audacity by being deprived of his sight, that is to say, of his reason.
Truth—like perfection, because it is perfect—is unknowable and unattainable. It is like the blinding surface of the Sun, ablaze with fire; like distant galaxies that captivate us with their almost mathematical beauty.
Yet nothing prevents us from imagining it.
Like Palladio, we consider the circle to be the most beautiful and perfect form. That is why we chose to represent the ideal as a mirrored sphere. It is enclosed beneath a dome and can be walked around in a circle, yet there is no single vantage point from which it can be seen in its entirety.
That is precisely the point.
In Bangkok, Thailand, there is the Temple of the Reclining Buddha—Wat Pho—where a gigantic gilded figure of the Buddha is housed within a relatively confined, albeit magnificent, interior. Visitors can study individual fragments of the sculpture in extraordinary detail, yet they are unable to take in the figure as a whole. We adopted the same principle because we have no desire for our guests to share the fate of the protagonist of Pi (just kidding).
In the adjoining room, visitors will encounter an absurdist video artwork inspired by Soviet television news broadcasts and the work of the British comedy troupe Monty Python. It presents an imagined alternative reality whose inhabitants, to their misfortune, have actually achieved perfection.
A quote from Darren Aronofsky’s film Pi
At first glance, it may seem trite to quote The Four Books of Architecture—the canonical work of the great Andrea Palladio, which shaped the course of world architecture for nearly five centuries. Trite, perhaps, and outdated. Yet it is difficult to argue with his assertion that “the most beautiful and most perfect forms, from which all others derive their proportions, are the circle and the square.”
His famous Villa Rotonda in Vicenza, much like another iconic Renaissance building—the villa of Andrea Mantegna in Mantua—is, in essence, a meditation on the quadrature of the circle. This ancient geometric problem asks one to construct a square equal in area to a given circle using only a compass and a straightedge. For centuries, the finest minds wrestled with this puzzle, all in vain. Finally, in 1882, the German mathematician Ferdinand von Lindemann (perhaps an ancestor of Till, who knows?) proved that the problem is impossible to solve, owing to the transcendental nature of the number π (pi).
At this point, it is important to acknowledge the mystical and philosophical dimension of this geometric paradox, particularly in light of the symbolic meaning traditionally attributed to the two figures. In Christianity—and not only there—the circle is associated with truth, perfection, eternity, the celestial realm, the Kingdom of Heaven; the square, by contrast, symbolizes order, wholeness, materiality, and the earthly world. Consequently, the union of the circle and the square, or the transformation of one into the other, signifies the connection between heaven and earth and refers to a fundamental religious doctrine according to which “the invisible heavenly world and the visible earthly world are united in God as their common creator.”
One might therefore suggest that the ambition to solve the quadrature of the circle carried within it something almost blasphemous—a challenge to the divine itself. All the better, then, that it turned out to be a dead end for the human intellect.
As a result, the quadrature of the circle became a metaphor for the futile search for truth, for attempts to attain perfection in an imperfect world, to transcend the limits of sensory experience. The number π acquired a dubious reputation as a key to the mysteries of the universe and is now perceived almost as an alchemical symbol.
It is no coincidence that π—the sixteenth letter of the ancient Greek alphabet—gave its name to Darren Aronofsky’s cult film about Max Cohen, a paranoid schizophrenic and brilliant mathematician who seeks a universal pattern in stock market fluctuations. He discovers a mysterious 216-digit number and, in the process, descends into madness. He becomes convinced that the sequence generated by his computer contains the true name of God. His salvation from insanity comes in the form of a drill driven into his own temple.
Throughout the film, the protagonist repeatedly utters the phrase that serves as the epigraph to this manifesto. As one might guess, “looking at the Sun” is a metaphor for the pursuit of truth—which is also God. Cohen believes he has finally seen it and is punished for his audacity by being deprived of his sight, that is to say, of his reason.
Truth—like perfection, because it is perfect—is unknowable and unattainable. It is like the blinding surface of the Sun, ablaze with fire; like distant galaxies that captivate us with their almost mathematical beauty.
Yet nothing prevents us from imagining it.
Like Palladio, we consider the circle to be the most beautiful and perfect form. That is why we chose to represent the ideal as a mirrored sphere. It is enclosed beneath a dome and can be walked around in a circle, yet there is no single vantage point from which it can be seen in its entirety.
That is precisely the point.
In Bangkok, Thailand, there is the Temple of the Reclining Buddha—Wat Pho—where a gigantic gilded figure of the Buddha is housed within a relatively confined, albeit magnificent, interior. Visitors can study individual fragments of the sculpture in extraordinary detail, yet they are unable to take in the figure as a whole. We adopted the same principle because we have no desire for our guests to share the fate of the protagonist of Pi (just kidding).
In the adjoining room, visitors will encounter an absurdist video artwork inspired by Soviet television news broadcasts and the work of the British comedy troupe Monty Python. It presents an imagined alternative reality whose inhabitants, to their misfortune, have actually achieved perfection.
Project Curator: Anatoly Belov
Concept Author: Alexey Ilin
In collaboration with: Ortiga Development
Concept Author: Alexey Ilin
In collaboration with: Ortiga Development