Spider webs, soap bubbles, and legendary visionaries like Buckminster Fuller are only some of the sources which have inspired artist Tomás Saraceno, born in 1973. Presented for the first time in the exhibition “Tomás Saraceno. Cloud Cities” between 15 September 2011 and 15 January 2012 at the Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart (Museum for Contemporary Art) in Berlin in the framework of the “Dornbracht Installation Projects” is a large installation by this artist which consists of circa 20 works and occupies the entire area of the historic hall.
The artist refers to his works – organic spatial networks, some containing living plants, others suspended in space only with networks of black cables – as “biospheres.” In 2009, with “Galaxies Forming along Filaments, like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider’s Web,” installed at the Venice Biennale, Saraceno tensed his works in space using black cables in a way that was analogous to a spider’s web.
The point of departure for this artist, who initially studied architecture, is an interest in our shared present-day and future environments. With scientific meticulousness, his works pursue the idea of a “realizable utopia.” The experimental approach of “Air-Port-City,” developed continuously by Saraceno over a period of years, exemplifies his method. Inspired by the eponymous “Airport-City” in Frankfurt, where the artist lives and works, Saraceno conceptualizes possible architectonic environments which take the form of cell-style, hovering cities. Saraceno has also created works for public spaces. Beginning in 2007, the “Museo Aero Solar” has flown around the world. This enormous solar balloon, whose skin consists of thousands of used plastic bags, is augmented during each landing by additional plastic bags before – thereby transformed – continuing its journey.
