Tomás Saraceno: Silent Autumn (WISE 0359-54/M+M): Frieze Sculpture, The Regent's Park, London
Tomás Saraceno’s cloud sculptures and installations stem from his long-standing artistic inquiry—Cloud Cities—a proposal for a common imaginary for an ethical re-alliance with the environment, the planet, and the cosmic web of life beyond Anthropocentrism. The geometry of these modular compositions are based on the Weaire-Phelan model, which replicates the inner structure of soap bubbles as they combine and create geometric boundaries. Silent Autumn (WISE 0359-54/M+M) also considers the way that subtle relationships are encoded in the language of pigments. The ochres, golds, browns, and reds correspond with the cyclical process of composition and decomposition that is common to the flora of all ecologies. The autumnal tones of the sculpture’s panels recall the leaves which fall and accumulate over the ground as winter approaches.
Studio Tomás Saraceno occupies the factory building on the former site of photographic film and dye manufacturer Actien-Gesellschaft für Anilin-Fabrication (AGFA). In its years developing dyes, AGFA attempted to faithfully reproduce pigments of nature, like Malachitgrün (Malachite green), which it invented in 1878 and named after the mineral that bore a similarly intense hue. In this way, nature has been woven into the processes of patenting and commodification of color, with the product titles of commercial synthetic dyes often derived from the names of the flowering plants they imitate. However, the land remains severely polluted to this day as a result of the industrial activities of AGFA, to the extent that food cannot be grown there as it would not be safe for consumption.
AGFA’s interconnection with nature is an all-too typical example of extractivism, a willful borrowing from the natural world while leaving in return a legacy of destruction. Silent Autumn (WISE 0359-54/M+M) instead comes to represent the aliveness of matter, and the constant flow of becoming which builds our shared world. Re-figuring flows of atmospheric, temporal and energetic relation, the artwork transforms rhythms of extinction marked by systemic addiction, and instead builds toward a resilient future.
Born in 1973 in Tucuman, Argentina, Saraceno currently lives and works in Berlin. Among his many exhibitions since the late 1990s, Saraceno’s important solo presentations include those at The Shed, New York (2022), Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2019), Museo de Arte Moderno Buenos Aires, Argentina (2017), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA (2016), HfG Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany (2014),Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2011-12), and the Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis (2009-10). His work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, among others.
Installation images by Elliott Mickleburgh
