TOMÁS SARACENO

Curator: Marie-Noëlle Farcy

Utopia exists until it is created.
Tomás Saraceno

Optimistic and enthusiastic, inspired by ecological philosophy and visionary developments of theorist architects like Peter Cook, Yona Friedman or Buckminster Fuller, Tomás Saraceno pursues the idea “of a creatable utopia” and invents luminous installations, kinetic sculptures, suspended gardens and even inflatable architecture. Conceived as “vehicles lighter than air”, these floating installations are supplied by solar energy and made with original materials such as aerogel, an extremely fine film, specially conceived and patented by the artist. A trained architect, Saraceno continuously reaches for the sky while keeping his feet firmly on the ground.

Through his works, real syntheses of engineering, physics and art, he throws into question the static model of town development, as well as the individualist dimension of our modern communities. In Air-Port-City, for example, an experimental concept developed some years ago which has been evolving throughout the projects, he offers dwelling and living areas through a system of modules which are floating in the air. Spinning out the cloud metaphor, he questions the notions of territory and frontiers, as well as of sustainable urban and social development, through work which is as poetic as it is critical, and of a beauty which is sometimes quite dazzling.

For his exhibition for the third chapter of the Habiter cycle at Mudam, Tomás Saraceno presents the experimental project carried out in 2008 in the vast landscapes of his native Argentina, an experience which the photographs and films produced on the spot and co-produced by Mudam show. With a passion for flying, he has orchestrated, with his team, a dance of three large inflatable structures in the sky, to which is secured a tent in the guise of a rudimentary settlement. These monumental balloons cannot resist adventure, ever carried by the wind. In response to this project, suspended in the sky of the Grand Hall, one of the pieces of inflatable modular architecture, Air-Port-City, is spread out. Floating within interlaced rigging, it incarnates this pursuit of floating dwelling places of the future.