Tomas Saraceno
ON AIR
2018
Installation view
Informed by the worlds of art, architecture, natural sciences and engineering, Tomas Saraceno’s floating sculptures and interactive installations propose new, sustainable ways of inhabiting the environment. Throughout the past decade, he has explored the possibility of a future airborne existence as part of his ongoing Air-Port-City / Cloud City project – a utopia of flying metropolises made up of habitable, cell-like platforms that migrate and recombine as freely as clouds themselves. Building on the progressive proposals and theories put forth by R. Buckminster Fuller, Gyula Kosice, Yona Friedman and other visionary architects before him, Saraceno develops engaging proposals and models that invite viewers to conceptualize innovative ways of living and interacting with one another, and with their surroundings at large. Born in 1973 in Tucuman, Argentina, Saraceno currently lives and works in Berlin. He studied architecture at Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires in Argentina from 1992 to 1999 and received postgraduate degrees from Escuela Superior de bellas Ares de la Nación Ernesto de la Carcova, Buenos Aires (2000) and Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste - Städelschule-Frankfurt am Main (2003). In 2009, he attended the International Space Studies Program at NASA Center Ames in Silicon Valley, CA, and was awarded the presitgious Calder Prize later that year. Among his many exhibitions since the late 1990s, Saraceno’s important solo presentations include ON AIR, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2019), Tomás Saraceno: Aerographies The Utopian Practitioner and Visionary, Fosun Foundation Shanghai, Shanghai, China (2019), Tomás Saraceno: How to Entangle the Universe in a Spider Web, Museo de Arte Moderno Buenos Aires, Argentina (2017), Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany (2017) Stillness in Motion — Cloud Cities, curated by Joseph Becker, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2016), Cosmic Jive, Tomas Saraceno: The Spider Sessions, curated by Luca Cerizza at the Villa Croce in Genoa, Italy (2014), Tomás Saraceno, HfG Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany (2014), In orbit, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K21 in Düsseldorf (2013), On Space time foam, Hangar Bicocca in Milan (2012-13), Tomas Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City, a site-specific installation commissioned for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012), Cloud Specific, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Louis (2011-12), Cloud Cities, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2011-12), 14 billion, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2010), traveled to BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2011), Lighter than Air, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, traveled to Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, Texas (2009-10). Saraceno also presented two major installations at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 as part of the group exhibition, May You Live In Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff. In 2009, he was included in the 53rd Venice Biennale as part of the group exhibition, Fari Mondi//Making Worlds, curated by Daniel Birnbaum. His work is presently represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Miami Art Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean in Luxembourg, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Canada, among others.
Courtesy of www.tanyabonakdargallery.com