For his first solo exhibition in China, artist Tomás Saraceno will bring together a compendium of works from across his practice. Designed especially for the galleries of Fosun Foundation, the exhibition performs as a model for a new, alternative form of living, one that attunes to the natural rhythms of the Earth’s cycle and the more-than-human species we share the planet with.

 

In today’s China, as the society, the economy, science, and technology are all developing apace, Fosun Foundation Shanghai is honoured to present the art of Tomás Saraceno, which are replete with considerations of life in the future, both imaginary and practical. They ask us to imagine how, in this age of unprecedented human connection and interaction, we can work together to build a more beautiful future world, one whose development is sustainable in the long term. His works, located at the intersection of art and science, draw on research whose origins are as broad and multifaceted as the subjects he explores– from spider webs to the atmosphere to the architectural vision of Cloud Cities.

 

This exhibition concentrates on the space above the Earth’s surface, inviting viewers to travel together on an imagined journey from the micro- to the macrocosmic. The artist centres his explorations and constructions around the spaces above the surface of Earth, located in air, outside the realm of extant human habitations. Saraceno’s works give rise to the imagery of the structure of the observable universe, seen in the micro scale of the spider web, and which expands through other audiovisual works to reveal a universe that morphs in perpetual motion, reminding us that we are all always floating on cosmic clouds of galaxies. Other works incorporate shapes and geometries, from clouds, foam and neural communication networks, which collectively produce a vision of an experiential environment, reading like a new cartography of the air. The utopic realisation projects a floating future that is slowly gliding nomadically through the sky in cloud-like formations of innumerable coequal structures, powered only by thermodynamic atmospheric forces and cosmic energy flows coming for the Sun, a way of sustainable living and moving with the Earth and all its inhabitants.

 

 

About Artist
Tomás Saraceno was born in 1973 in Tucuman, Argentina. He studied architecture at Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires in Argentina and received postgraduate degrees from Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de la Nación Ernesto de la Cárcova, Buenos Aires and Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule, Frankfurt. In 2009, he attended the International Space Studies Program at NASA Center Ames in Silicon Valley, California. Tomás Saraceno lives and works in and beyond the planet earth. Informed by the worlds of art, architecture, natural sciences, astrophysics and engineering, his floating sculptures and interactive installations propose new, sustainable ways of inhabiting the environment.

 

About Fosun Foundation Shanghai
Located in the Bund Finance Center, Fosun Foundation Shanghai is a non-profit organization founded by the Fosun Group and the Fosun Foundation in November 2016. The centre is designed by British design firm Foster + Partners and creative director Heatherwick Studio. The building features three layers of moving veils in appearance. Its core mission is threefold: to promote contemporary art, connect China with international cultural systems, and foster public engagement with, understanding of, and participation in global contemporary art. Through its exhibitions and public programs, the centre also offers Chinese artists an international-calibre platform to feature their work. Its roof houses the large-scale spatial installation Counter Sky Garden by renowned Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima, which is also part of the Foundation’s permanent collection.

 

 

Another central element is Stillness in Motion, a large-scale net installation with large modular interlocking elements—the cloud shapes that recur in the artist's work-that are intertwined inside a web of ropes. Informed by an idealized foam of equal-sized bubbles, called a Weaire-Phelan structure, that describes the natural phenomenon of the bubble and foam aggregation.

 

 

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Tomás Saraceno
Installation view at Esther Schipper booth, FIAC, 2017
Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin
© Photography by Andrea Rossetti, 2017

 

Cloud sculptures are assembled from modular interlocking elements. A metal frame defines each of the pentagonal planes of the geometric shape; some of the sides of the polyhedrons have mirrors inserted flush with the metal frame, others are left empty. These partially open forms allow the viewer to look through the shapes, and see their interior structure; some show internal webs of string that appear to hold the planes in place, in a way visualizing the physical forces exerting pressure. At the same time, the knotted string inside looks itself like the outline of a cell or exploding star. The geometry of the mirrored shapes contrasts with this internal web, creating an aesthetic tension in addition to the structural one.

 

 

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Tomás Saraceno
Stillness in Motion – Cloud Cities, 2016
Installation view, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Curated by Joseph Becker.
Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin
© Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno, 2016

 

Tomás Saraceno’s flying sculptures are constructed from the mirror, solar or transparent panels, using the latest in lightweight materials and sustainable energy research. They invoke the possibility of building airborne architectural structures while harvesting energy from the environment. Using differently shaped lifting sails, organizing structures and construction principles, the flying sculptures demonstrate the wide-ranging research and development the artist explores. Several of the sculptures explore the notion of tensegrity: a term coined by the visionary architect Buckminster Fuller to refer to the tensional integrity inside a net of continuous tension holding isolated elements in place.

 

 

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Tomás Saraceno
Solar Bell, 2013
Installation view at Portscapes 2, Rotterdam.
Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin
© Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno, 2013

 

Solar Bell/P/2000 is a flying sculpture, a vision of a hovering observation tower. The three-meter-tall triangular structure resembles a kite but it is built using the latest technologies in the field of lightweight materials and sustainable energy research. The design of Solar Bell is based on a model of a modular tetrahedron, or four-sided pyramid, invented by Alexander Graham Bell during his early investigations into manned flight. Bell made important discoveries in the field of aviation and frame construction. Saraceno breathes new life into Bell's legacy by using the materials and knowledge of our time.

 

 

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Tomás Saraceno
Solar Bell, 2013
Installation view at Portscapes 2, Rotterdam.
Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin
© Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno, 2013

 

Shanghai/Cloud Cities is a visualization of Tomás Saraceno's long-standing artistic inquiry into a new, alternative form of urbanism, that envisages a future airborne life. Consisting of a digital print on wall paper, the work gives rise to imagery of the structure of the observable universe that morphs in perpetual motion. This work incorporates shapes and geometries drawn from clouds, foam and neural communication networks that collectively produce a new cartography of the air. On the lower part of the wall paper, iconic monuments of Shanghai and its surroundings are depicted.

 

 

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Tomás Saraceno
Stillness in Motion – Cloud Cities, 2016
Installation view, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Curated by Joseph Becker.
Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin
© Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno, 2016

 

Saraceno was the first person to scan, reconstruct and reimagine spiders’ weaved spatial habitats, and possesses the only three-dimensional spider web collection in existence.

Saraceno’s groundbreaking research and work with spider webs first originated from artist’s interest in astrophysics: to him, each of these translucent boxes opens up an entire universe.

The dramatically illuminated cubes host unusual webs built by different species of spiders. Some are compound creations woven by different species of spiders, one atop the other’s web. Partly built by so called social spiders, a small minority among otherwise solitary insects, these unique multi-generational and multi-species structures would not occur in the wild. These webs are hybrid creations woven by spiders on top of the older threads built by a different species. These unique multi-generational and multi-species structures would not occur in ‘nature’.

Supervising their development, the artist touches upon key principles of social organization: cooperation, cohabitation and hybridity. This is an artistic experiment that weaves architecture, biology, network analyses and social behaviour into questions of sharing, communicating and building. The titles of each of these works reveal the technical basis for each sculptural element, detailing the genus and species of the spider collaborators and the amount of time needed to construct their webs.

 

 

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Tomás Saraceno
Hybrid semi-social musical instrument Antennae Galaxies built by a pair of Cyrtophora citricola - two weeks, and a single Cyrtophora moluccensis - one week, 2014
Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin
© Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno, 2014

 

The images of the video have been created in a collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. They are the result of an attempt to enhance and solidify the processes and techniques of scanning these 3D webs, a challenge that in 2012 had only ever been completed once before. The challenge of the scan is the fine detail and complexity of the silk and structure. Since no detailed architectural information exists about these 3D webs, there is little to no scientific discussion about them or understanding of their properties. The video uses time-lapse technology.