ARTISTS
Tomás Saraceno: Lighter than Air
14 May, 2010 - 07 Aug, 2010
This summer, Blaffer Art Museum presents Tomás Saraceno’s first large-scale museum exhibition in the United States. Showcasing twenty installations, sculptures and photographs made since 2003, Tomás Saraceno: Lighter than Air is on view at Blaffer from May 14 through August 7, 2010.
Trained initially as an architect, Saraceno follows in the tradition of visionaries such as R. Buckminster Fuller by looking to scientific principles and advances in technology to develop ideas for future sustainable communities. But instead of utopia on land, Saraceno looks to the sky for his inspiration. His long term project entitled Air-Port-City (2001-present) envisions networks of mile-long geodesic balloons that provide living environments aloft in international air space. Free from geopolitical borders, these habitable cells would combine and separate much like drifting clouds, challenging concepts of nationhood and land ownership.
In Lighter than Air, the laser-printed Liverpool/Flying Garden/Air-Port-City (2008) illustrates Saraceno’s heavenly utopia alongside architectural prototypes of the artist’s aerial habitats. One of these is 32SW/Flying Garden/Air-Port-City (2007), a cluster of inflated spheres anchored to the floor, wall and ceiling of the museum. It contains Spanish moss, a plant that lives solely on water and airborne nutrients, suggesting that the presence of sustainable floating communities is what the future may indeed hold.
Saraceno is internationally recognized for his prototypes that use the interdependencies of systems to ponder ecological questions that go beyond the natural world. The artist contrives environments that anticipate new socio-cultural platforms for experiencing and interacting with our surroundings. “Now there is an even better consciousness of sustainability in our lives on planet Earth,” Saraceno explains. “In this way, my work tries to explore and interpret the present reality, using technological innovations for new social objectives.”
Tomás Saraceno was born in Tucamán, Argentina, in 1973, and currently lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Most recently, he has had solo shows in Berlin, Luxembourg and Copenhagen, as well as an installation in the 2009 Venice Biennale, Making Worlds.
Tomás Saraceno: Lighter than Air was organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and curated by Yasmil Raymond, curator of Dia Art Foundation.
Trained initially as an architect, Saraceno follows in the tradition of visionaries such as R. Buckminster Fuller by looking to scientific principles and advances in technology to develop ideas for future sustainable communities. But instead of utopia on land, Saraceno looks to the sky for his inspiration. His long term project entitled Air-Port-City (2001-present) envisions networks of mile-long geodesic balloons that provide living environments aloft in international air space. Free from geopolitical borders, these habitable cells would combine and separate much like drifting clouds, challenging concepts of nationhood and land ownership.
In Lighter than Air, the laser-printed Liverpool/Flying Garden/Air-Port-City (2008) illustrates Saraceno’s heavenly utopia alongside architectural prototypes of the artist’s aerial habitats. One of these is 32SW/Flying Garden/Air-Port-City (2007), a cluster of inflated spheres anchored to the floor, wall and ceiling of the museum. It contains Spanish moss, a plant that lives solely on water and airborne nutrients, suggesting that the presence of sustainable floating communities is what the future may indeed hold.
Saraceno is internationally recognized for his prototypes that use the interdependencies of systems to ponder ecological questions that go beyond the natural world. The artist contrives environments that anticipate new socio-cultural platforms for experiencing and interacting with our surroundings. “Now there is an even better consciousness of sustainability in our lives on planet Earth,” Saraceno explains. “In this way, my work tries to explore and interpret the present reality, using technological innovations for new social objectives.”
Tomás Saraceno was born in Tucamán, Argentina, in 1973, and currently lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Most recently, he has had solo shows in Berlin, Luxembourg and Copenhagen, as well as an installation in the 2009 Venice Biennale, Making Worlds.
Tomás Saraceno: Lighter than Air was organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and curated by Yasmil Raymond, curator of Dia Art Foundation.
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This summer, Blaffer Art Museum presents Tomás Saraceno’s first large-scale museum exhibition in the United States. Showcasing twenty installations, sculptures and photographs made since 2003, Tomás Saraceno: Lighter than Air is on view at Blaffer from May 14 through August 7, 2010.
Trained initially as an architect, Saraceno follows in the tradition of visionaries such as R. Buckminster Fuller by looking to scientific principles and advances in technology to develop ideas for future sustainable communities. But instead of utopia on land, Saraceno looks to the sky for his inspiration. His long term project entitled Air-Port-City (2001-present) envisions networks of mile-long geodesic balloons that provide living environments aloft in international air space. Free from geopolitical borders, these habitable cells would combine and separate much like drifting clouds, challenging concepts of nationhood and land ownership.
In Lighter than Air, the laser-printed Liverpool/Flying Garden/Air-Port-City (2008) illustrates Saraceno’s heavenly utopia alongside architectural prototypes of the artist’s aerial habitats. One of these is 32SW/Flying Garden/Air-Port-City (2007), a cluster of inflated spheres anchored to the floor, wall and ceiling of the museum. It contains Spanish moss, a plant that lives solely on water and airborne nutrients, suggesting that the presence of sustainable floating communities is what the future may indeed hold.
Saraceno is internationally recognized for his prototypes that use the interdependencies of systems to ponder ecological questions that go beyond the natural world. The artist contrives environments that anticipate new socio-cultural platforms for experiencing and interacting with our surroundings. “Now there is an even better consciousness of sustainability in our lives on planet Earth,” Saraceno explains. “In this way, my work tries to explore and interpret the present reality, using technological innovations for new social objectives.”
Tomás Saraceno was born in Tucamán, Argentina, in 1973, and currently lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Most recently, he has had solo shows in Berlin, Luxembourg and Copenhagen, as well as an installation in the 2009 Venice Biennale, Making Worlds.
Tomás Saraceno: Lighter than Air was organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and curated by Yasmil Raymond, curator of Dia Art Foundation.
Trained initially as an architect, Saraceno follows in the tradition of visionaries such as R. Buckminster Fuller by looking to scientific principles and advances in technology to develop ideas for future sustainable communities. But instead of utopia on land, Saraceno looks to the sky for his inspiration. His long term project entitled Air-Port-City (2001-present) envisions networks of mile-long geodesic balloons that provide living environments aloft in international air space. Free from geopolitical borders, these habitable cells would combine and separate much like drifting clouds, challenging concepts of nationhood and land ownership.
In Lighter than Air, the laser-printed Liverpool/Flying Garden/Air-Port-City (2008) illustrates Saraceno’s heavenly utopia alongside architectural prototypes of the artist’s aerial habitats. One of these is 32SW/Flying Garden/Air-Port-City (2007), a cluster of inflated spheres anchored to the floor, wall and ceiling of the museum. It contains Spanish moss, a plant that lives solely on water and airborne nutrients, suggesting that the presence of sustainable floating communities is what the future may indeed hold.
Saraceno is internationally recognized for his prototypes that use the interdependencies of systems to ponder ecological questions that go beyond the natural world. The artist contrives environments that anticipate new socio-cultural platforms for experiencing and interacting with our surroundings. “Now there is an even better consciousness of sustainability in our lives on planet Earth,” Saraceno explains. “In this way, my work tries to explore and interpret the present reality, using technological innovations for new social objectives.”
Tomás Saraceno was born in Tucamán, Argentina, in 1973, and currently lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Most recently, he has had solo shows in Berlin, Luxembourg and Copenhagen, as well as an installation in the 2009 Venice Biennale, Making Worlds.
Tomás Saraceno: Lighter than Air was organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and curated by Yasmil Raymond, curator of Dia Art Foundation.
Artists on show
Contact details
Contemporary Salon *Co-presented by the UH Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts
June 30, 2010
6:30 PM
Lecture by UH Assistant Professor of Architectural History and Theory Coordinator Michelangelo Sabatino
July 21, 2010
6:30 PM
120 Fine Arts Building, University of Houston Houston, TX, USA 77204
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