core.form-ula

Who: Tomas Saraceno

What: Sculpture/Science

Where:  Japan, USA, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, England, Brazil

How: inflatables

When: 1998 – Present (2008)

Why: Tomás Saraceno looks to the sky and sees possibilities for rethinking how we live in relation to one another—for reshaping notions about nationality and property, and revising our ideas about the fixity of the built environment and the organization of cities. Air-Port-City, Saraceno’s ongoing project, envisions networks of habitable platforms that float in the air. The freedom of their airborne location allows for sections of living space to join together like clouds, creating aerial cities in constant physical transformation. As he explains, “Like continental drift at the beginning of the world, the new cities will search for their positions in the air in order to find their place in the universe . . . [this structure is] capable of imagining more elastic and dynamic border rules (political, geographical, etc.) for a new space/cyberspace.”

Saraceno’s suspended environments give physical form to this conceptual framework, and anticipate at small scale the reality of his large-scale vision. Other works such as the photographic series Cumulus use the natural environment to poetically suggest this skyscape of the future. Solar de Uyuni in the Bolivian Andes, where these images were shot, is the largest salt lake in the world, and its glassy surface reflects the sky, producing the illusion of a plane of existence suspended among the clouds. But Saraceno’s work transcends quixotic ambition by applying practical principles from engineering, physics, chemistry, aeronautics, and architecture to experiment and model logistical solutions for airborne habitation. In periodic collaboration with the Buckminster Fuller Virtual Institute he has realized the largest solar-powered geodesic balloon ever built. He has also worked with a new material called Aerogel, a sponge-like insulating substance developed for use in the aerospace industry. Its incredibly light weight (only three times that of air itself), coupled with its strong structural properties, affords a host of possibilities for future construction and engineering of airborne vehicles.

Like visionary architects of the past (Buckminster Fuller and Archigram, among others), Saraceno intends to reshape social space and human behavior as much as physical space through his futuristic speculation. Traveling on passive energy collected from the wind and sun, his mile-long geodesic balloon foregrounds ecological sustainability, and does not rely on impositions upon or obliterations of the natural landscape to exist. His Flying Garden works imagine parallel agricultural modules, at present housing species of Spanish moss that receive necessary nutrition from the atmosphere—they are “air-sufficient,” an apt metaphor for the human self-sufficiency that his project hopes to engender. The operative concept at the heart of Air-Port-City is one of dynamic balance, with an idea of “cities and civilizations encouraging a continuous mobility” that supercedes traditional notions of earthbound national, racial, and social boundaries between people. In their permanent nomadism, these modules for living generate alternate structures of social organization, with implications for shifts in economic and political structures as well. “Utopia exists until it is created . . . the idea of utopia is in constant mutation and changes according to the era,” and Saraceno’s material, formal, and conceptual investigations advance his proposition for a possible untethered future in the sky.

Saraceno’s MATRIX exhibition, his first solo museum exhibition in the United States, will extend outside the MATRIX Gallery, making use of the Berkeley Art Museum’s unique architecture with a new suspended sculpture for the museum’s entrance atrium.

Saraceno’s work has been featured in solo presentations at Towada Art Center, Japan; Centre d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona; Barbican Art Gallery, London; and Portikus, Frankfurt. He has participated in exhibitions at venues such as the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Lyon Biennial; Sharjah Biennial 8, United Arab Emirates; Büro Friedrich, Berlin; de Appel, Amsterdam; São Paulo Bienal; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Museum Boijmans van Bueningen; Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art; 50th Biennale di Venezia; and Kunstverein, Frankfurt. Saraceno studied architecture at the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, then continued postgraduate studies in art and architecture at Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Ernesto de la Carcova, Buenos Aires, and Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Frankfurt.

Elizabeth Thomas
Phyllis Wattis MATRIX Curator

T O M A S S A R A C E N O

Born 1973, Tucuman, Argentina
Currently lives & works in Frankfurt am Main

Education

2001-2003 Postgraduate in Art & Architecture, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Frankfurt
1999-2000 Postgraduate in Art & Architecture, Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Ernesto de la Carcova, Buenos Aires
1992-1999 Licenciado en Architectura en la Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2008 Permanent installation, Towada Art Center, Towada, Japan
Artists-in-Residence: Tomás Saraceno, Walker Art Center
Tomas Saraceno, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

2007 Tomas Saraceno, Biosphere MW32, Pinksummer, Genoa, Italy
Tomas Saraceno, Matrix 224, University of California at Berkeley
Tomas Saraceno, Opening, AEREA, Stockholm
Unlimited, Art Basel 38
Air-Port-City, De Vleeshal, Netherlands

2006 Tomas Saraceno, Centre d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain
Air-Port-City, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
Tomas Saraceno, The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery, London
Personal States/Infinite Actives, Portikus, Frankfurt (with Marjetica Potrc)

2004 On-Air, Pinksummer, Genoa, Italy

2003 in-migration, Universität Kaiserslautern, Germany

2000 612 Planetas, Parque Planetario, Buenos Aires

1998 Luces de estrellas, Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Ernesto de la Carcova, Buenos Aires

Selected Group Exhibitions

2008 Psycho Buildings: Architecture by Artists, the Hayward Gallery, London Greenwashing – Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy
Grandeur, Arnhem, The Netherlands
The Liverpool Biennial 2008, Liverpool

2007 Brave New Worlds, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
The History of a Decade that Has Not Yet Been Named, Lyon Biennial, France
Cloud, (Air Show) Gunpowder Park, London, UK
Still Life. Art, Ecology, and the Politics of Change, Sharjah Biennial 8, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Megastructure Reloaded, Berlin Mitte
entrada al presente, El Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, Mexico
In cima alle stelle. Alla scoperta della volta celeste, Forte di Bard, Aosta, Italy

2006 Reconstruction 1, Sudeley Castle, Winchcombe, Gloucestershire
Presented by, Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna

2006 Buenos días Santiago – an exhibition as expedition, Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago de Chile
São Paulo Biennale

2005 I still believe in miracles, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Longing Balloons Are Floating Around the World, Green Light Pavilion, Berlin
The Opening, Andersen_S Contemporary Art, Copenhagen
Luna Park – Fantastic Art, Villa Manin Center for Contemporary Art, Italy
Project Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Bueningen, Rotterdam
Pursuit of Happiness, Leidsche Rijn, Netherlands
on mobility, Büro Friedrich, Berlin
Dialectic of Hope, Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow

2004 What is in my apartment when I’m not there, Berlin
Duende Open, Duende, Rotterdam
Universal Outstretch, Flaca Gallery, London
Common Property, Werkleitz Biennale, Halle, Germany
Do-It, www.e-flux.com/projects/do_it

2003 Utopia Station, Dreams and Conflicts: The dictatorship of the Viewer, Biennale di Venezia
ArtGentina, Buena Vista Building, Art Basel Miami
Here we come, Kunst und Austellungen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn
Un-build cities, Kunstverein, Bonn

2002 Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer, 50th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia
Xposition, Archtekturzentrum, Vienna; Berlague Institute, Rotterdam
Peace and Love, Palazzo Buonauguro, Bassano, Italy
Next, 8th International Architectural Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia
Mobile HIV/AIDS Health Clinic for Africa, with N. Miodragovic and K. Bollingur

2001 Rundgang, Staedelschule, Frankfurt
El Suelo en Renuncio, Ministerio de fomento Arqueria de los Nuevos Ministerios, Madrid
Real Presence, Tito Museum, Belgrade
Neue Welt, Kunstverein, Frankfurt

1999 City Editing, Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires
Siglo XX Arte y Cultura en la Argentina, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires

1998 Objetos de Jóvenes Artistas, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires

Images from liverpoolbiennial+ anualadearhitectura

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