Tomás Saraceno: Galaxies Forming Along Filaments, Like Droplets Along the Strands of a Spider’s Web: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is very pleased to present Tomas Saraceno’s Galaxies Forming Along Filaments, Like Droplets Along the Strands of a Spider’s Web, an exhibition comprising a large-scale installation and new sculpture. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.
Tomas Saraceno’s installation, sculpture and photography challenge the conventional restrictions on the human habitat, and suggest new ways of perceiving nature. Futuristic urban models of floating metropolises suggest the possibility of moving cities from the earth’s surface into the air and serve as a central theme in the artist's practice.
Continuing in the tradition of visionary architects before him, including Buckminster Fuller, Gyula Kosice, Archigram and the Ant Farm Collective, Saraceno’s concerns are born of the contemporary anxieties over the depletion of world resources, conservation and immigration. Saraceno is working towards realizing these futuristic urban models as a practical solution to the crowding of the earth’s surface. Fully realizing the philosopher Felix Guattari’s “ecosophy” the artists brings together the three related ecologies of the environmental, mental and social worlds into a methodological practice.
Having applied principles of engineering and physics as well as architecture to further develop his ideas, recent projects have included Museo Aerosolar, a web 2.0 collaborative project where expansively scaled solar balloons are constructed to become spontaneously weightless and take flight. Fabricated using reclaimed plastic shopping bags from around the globe, on which the participants have made drawings, Saraceno sees these sculptures as flying canvases that raise questions as to how national and socio-political boundaries might be overcome.
In this new installation Saraceno takes the spider’s web as a starting point. Investigating how the gossamer thin filaments of these intricate webs are able to suspend life by way of intricate geometry, Saraceno suggests at a conceptual architectural proposal that relies on this most delicate and prehistoric system of life to take us into our future. Of particular interest is the application of this phenomenon throughout the history of time. A keystone to Saraceno’s fascination with these web constructions was the recent discovery that suggests the early universe was a sponge-like form, with galaxies forming along filaments, like droplets on a spider's web.
All installation images above: Photo by Fabian Bergfield
