Tomás Saraceno is featured in the Financial Times this week, detailing his work with the minuscule movements and actions of spiders that he magnifies through scanning and amplification techniques, including a recent project where he created amplified “jam sessions” between spiders and human participants.  “When spiders pluck the strings of their webs and beat on leaves, they make tiny vibrations. You have percussion, strings, an entire orchestra,” he writes.  “I invited musicians and writers to perform their work in the studio to see how the spiders communicated with them. Sometimes the spiders were shy and made little sound in response but sometimes they got very excited by what was going on around them.” (more…)

The Calder Prize 2005-2015 (Installation View)

The Calder Prize 2005-2015, now on view at Pace Gallery in London, explores the influence of artist Alexander Calder in relation to the work of six contemporary artists, each of whom were awarded a prize in the former’s name.  Now through March 5, the five winners of the Calder Prize to date are featured in conversation with Calder’s own work.  The artists awarded the Calder Prize are seen to be continuing Calder’s legacy by imagining new and innovative directions for sculpture, among them Tara Donovan (2005), Žilvinas Kempinas (2007), Tomás Saraceno (2009), Rachel Harrison (2011), Daren Bader (2013), and Haroon Mirza (2015). Working in impressively divergent media, the artists are united by their common vision to push the limits of material through variations on space and time in their work, a point that unifies them with Calder’s vision.   (more…)

New York banker and oil magnate Chris Keesee has opened a project space called Marfa Contemporary in the Texas town. He lent Tomás Saraceno’s Cloud City to the Met, and eventually wants to take it to Texas, but said: “it can’t be a permanent piece there—the last thing I want to see is it blowing away in a dust storm, tumbling across the desert”. Mr. Keesee is also the president of City Arts Center in Oklahoma City and serves as a trustee of other foundations focused on Arts and Arts Education. (more…)

All photographs taken by Lisa Marsova for Art Observed

For the past two months, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has housed a sizeable abstract installation by Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno on its rooftop terrace.  The structure, titled “Cloud City”, is Saraceno’s first site-specific commission in the United States.  With a production spanning only the past decade, Saraceno is a relative newcomer to the art world, but his interdisciplinary investigations in environment have already generated wide attention.  As a complex fusion of architecture, geometry, and the cosmos, “Cloud City” is a continuation in Saraceno’s study of the overlay of art and science.

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‪‬Tomás Saraceno‘s rooftop installation at the Met nears completion, the 20-ton geometric “Cloud City” explores space, time, and gravity, “You can have a feeling of weightlessness that’s a bit disorienting,” says the artist

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