Tomás Saraceno

San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina, 1973

            The international impact of Tomás Saraceno's work positions him as one of the most recognized Argentine artists beyond the borders of our country. Italy, Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Denmark, France, Japan, and Korea are some of the venues that have hosted his peculiar inhabitable worlds. Trained as an architect at the University of Buenos Aires but always drawn to the world of engineering and invention, Saraceno challenges the limits of imagination by making possible and real environments that may seem at first glance like products of dreamlike fantasy or the science fiction universe, enormous structures on a human scale designed to harbor life.

            After settling permanently in Frankfurt in 2001 to pursue a postgraduate degree in art and architecture at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule, the possibility of living in the air became a real question for the artist's work. To address it, he formed a multidisciplinary team with which he not only sought to speculate on the potentials and communal problems of an aerial existence but also delved into the convergence between science, technology, and art to contemplate the sustainability of human and non-human forms of existence. Black ropes stretched like spider webs, inflatable and walkable modules resembling celestial staircases, extensive surfaces of recyclable bags intervened by children, giant transparent and haloed spheres—his projects combine attention and mimicry with the natural world while also resorting to industrial materials and procedures that focus on the ecological context.

            Saraceno's work is a reflection on alternative forms of intelligence and organization, radiated by the animal, vegetable, and mineral world around us, increasingly exposed to predation. Simultaneously apocalyptic and utopian, his trajectory leaves behind the real and urgent question of the planet's survival, while providing factual answers by constructing worlds outside of this world: wind-driven aeolian museums, clouds capable of serving as shelters, floating gardens, enormous reticular nests.