Cloud City: A Constellation of Co-existing Realities
Tomás Saraceno captures the light reflected on the planet from the roof of the Metropolitan Museum
At night, in the Bolivian Uyuni Salt Flat, the stars shine in the sky and on its surface with the same intensity. The horizon is imperceptible, and compass needles go crazy due to the high concentration of lithium that may be found in the largest salt desert in the world. Instantly, the feeling that one is walking in the cosmos takes possession of the body.
This experience inspired Tomás Saraceno to create the reflective sculpture Cloud City. “It was one of the most impressive experiences in my life,” recounted the Argentine artist − whose work combines art, science and architecture − from his home in Germany. With polyhedrons made of steel and plexiglass, Saraceno constructed a network of reflective spheres, which in his view − guided by the ideas of the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk − represent complex life ecosystems.
Light is reflected on the surfaces and creates infinite dialogues between man and nature, between humankind and the universe.
C.L.: Although in a different way, those life spheres are evoked in installations such as Observatory/Airport City (2008) or Galaxies Forming along Filaments, Like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider’s Web (2008), a work that the French sociologist Bruno Latour called “a metaphor for social theory.”
T.S.: My works are all strung together, but I am thrilled that each of them may trigger different events, relationships that I do not anticipate, either.
C.L.: You use nature as a source of inspiration. In this case, the sun’s light and the city are materials employed to create these imaginary habitats.
T.S.: I like to think that Cloud City is a sundial, that it unleashes a network of invisible sun rays which interconnect distant places. That light finds us when we least expect it.
C.L.: Cloud City seems to float over Central Park and when one moves within it, up becomes down, the sky and the earth seem to change places, as in the Uyuni Salt Flat.
T.S.: The idea is that the capacity to walk challenge the capacity to perceive, and that we become aware of a constantly expanding simultaneity in the co-existing reality.
C.L.: The materials are the protagonists of this change.
T.S.: In my works I use reflective surfaces of any kind. Metal, inflatable elements, glass, solar panels that correspond to a reality, but materialize in a different way. Besides, molecular structures may be infinitely re-combined and configured.
C.L.: Behind the Cloud Cities/AirPort City project there is an investigation of the ways in which we relate to our environment, and your interest in space.
T.S.: I was excited at the thought of what would happen if it could be put into orbit and have it send its reflected light to Earth and to other planets, suns or universes. Cloud City creates frontiers that are more elastic and dynamic than the real ones, in the air, in the mind, and in the cyberspace.
C.L.: You are working on your next work for HangarBiccoca gallery in Milan, together with curator Andrea Lissoni.
T.S.: It will be a great aerial surface of interconnected spheres that people will be able to enter and walk through. I hope to have it ready by the end of this year or at the beginning of the next.
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Cloud City will be on view through November 4 at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
