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Cutting across the Chicago Architecture Biennial: Tomás Saraceno's spiders

2015-10-07T13:10:00-04:00

For the first few seconds you’re blind in the darkness. Then a reflex forces your pupils wider and your photoreceptor rod cells become more sensitive, sending a neural signal that alerts you to four glowing cubes that seem to be floating in mid-air in front of your body. It takes another few seconds for the glow to connect to its source, illuminate the supports of the plexiglass boxes, and finally render their content legible: a series of startlingly-complex and impossibly-delicate spiderwebs.

Here drawing back the curtain doesn’t destroy the magic. Quite to the contrary, Tomás Saraceno’s collaboration with various arachnids for the first Chicago Architecture Biennial has a power that extends beyond some mere trick of the light and runs deeper than a one-liner about non-human construction. It's a reprise of a project he's exhibited before, notably at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, but within an architectural context it conjures a particular significance.

The Argentine-born, Berlin-based Sara...

in orbit - Tomás Saraceno's gigantic floating installation

2013-08-20T17:58:00-04:00

Artist and architect Tomás Saraceno [...] created a massive layered installation that’s suspended more than 25 meters (approx. 82 feet) in the air of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen museum in Düsseldorf, Germany. “in orbit” stretches across the piazza under the mammoth glass ceiling of the K21 Ständehaus with its three levels of steel wire netting. Situated on the three levels are six inflated spheres that range in size, with the largest being 27 feet in diameter.

Previously: Tomas Sarceno's Met Museum Rooftop Installation 'Cloud City' Now Open

Tomas Sarceno's Met Museum Rooftop Installation 'Cloud City' Now Open

2012-05-15T16:55:00-04:00

Yesterday's gray sky and drizzle couldn't keep anxious press away from the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art where Argentine artist and architect Tomas Saraceno was officially debuting his new project "Cloud City". A sculptural constellation of 16 geodesic pods, Cloud City "floats" above the museum's roof anchored by steel cables... The futuristic construction features over 100 planes...