How did we install Tomás Saraceno’s Biospheres?

Tomás Saraceno is renowned for his ambitious sculptures and installations that take the form of webs and interconnected spheres or bubbles. His work is influenced by ideas of networking and ecology, looking to the systems and forms found in nature as the basis for his work. He has an ongoing interest in the structure of spiders’ webs and their adaptability to the changing environment, the complex structures mirrored in these works are salient symbols for the interconnectedness of ecosystems.

Watch: The install of Tomás Saraceno’s Biospheres

Tomás Saraceno ‘Biosphere cluster’

Tomás Saraceno, Argentina b.1973 / Biosphere 02 2009 / PVC, rope, nylon monofilament, acrylic, Tillandsia plants, air pressure regulator system, hydration system / Purchased 2014 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AC, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Tomás Saraceno

Tomás Saraceno, Argentina b.1973 / Biosphere 02 2009 / PVC, rope, nylon monofilament, acrylic, Tillandsia plants, air pressure regulator system, hydration system / Purchased 2014 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AC, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Tomás Saraceno / View full image

Tomás Saraceno, Argentina b.1973 / Biosphere cluster 2009 / PVC, rope, nylon monofilament, acrylic, Tillandsia plants, air pressure regulator system, hydration system / Purchased 2014 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AC, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Tomás Saraceno

Tomás Saraceno, Argentina b.1973 / Biosphere cluster 2009 / PVC, rope, nylon monofilament, acrylic, Tillandsia plants, air pressure regulator system, hydration system / Purchased 2014 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AC, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Tomás Saraceno / View full image

DELVE DEEPER: Tomás Saraceno’s Biospheres

Saraceno presents his installations as designs for floating dwellings and parks. Biosphere 02 contains Tillandsia plants, a type of Bromeliad that is native to the Americas. They receive all of their nutrients from water and air, so thrive in a closed ecosystem, such as the floating garden created by Saraceno. We are invited to imagine industrialised cities with similar floating bubbles containing gardens hovering above the ground to offer new green spaces.

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    Tomás Saraceno’s webs & interconnected spheres

    Argentine artist Tomas Saraceno is internationally renowned for his ambitious sculptures and installations that take the form of webs and interconnected spheres or bubbles. Frequently created through weaving and looping elastic rope into complex geometric forms they often resemble spider webs or clusters of galaxies. Taking his cue from architects such as Frei Otto (famous for designing the Munich Olympic Arena based on experiments with soap bubbles) and R Buckminster Fuller (the avant-garde architect who popularised the geodesic dome), biological systems inform the formal qualities of Saraceno’s work. In an ongoing body of work entitled ‘Air-Port-City’, the artist presents installations as designs for interconnected floating cities that function like clouds separating and coming together, thereby blurring political distinctions between nation states. In this body of work, architecture moves away from bricks and mortar and becomes malleable and responsive to specific issues at hand. Tomás Saraceno ‘Biosphere 02’ 2009 Each of the four Biosphere works recently acquired by the Gallery demonstrates the artist’s signature technique of intertwining rope, in this case weaving it around transparent, inflated bubbles. Their architecture is similar to that of geodesic domes. In parallel with ideas of interconnected floating cities is the artist’s ongoing interest in the structure of spider webs and their flexibility in a changing environment. Biosphere resembles a spider’s web — each threaded and knotted piece of rope within it is equally important to the structural integrity of the whole form, acting as a metaphor for the interconnectedness of ecosystems. Saraceno is influenced by ideas of networking and ecology, and by philosophers and social theorists who look to the systems in nature in order to provide new approaches to thinking about the world. He is specifically taken with the way that French philosopher Felix Guattari in The Three Ecologies (1989) ‘extends the definition of ecology to encompass social relations and human subjectivity as well as environmental concerns.’ Saraceno suggests that we: . . . start talking about the aesthetics and ethics of the economy, social ecology, politics . . . I think we should learn from the principle of ecology as a system of cohabitation of different cultural areas and understand the need for a principle of cooperation. This is apparent in his artworks, where the political and the aesthetic come together to reimagine the way we live. This group of works also takes inspiration from the ‘Biosphere 2’ experiments in Arizona in the early 1990s, which analysed the possibility of humans living within closed ecological environments. While the overall experiment was ultimately abandoned, the research undertaken continues to be drawn upon by practitioners in various fields of study. Saraceno’s Biosphere 02 sculpture contains Tillandsia plants — a type of bromeliad that is native to the Americas. They receive all of their nutrients from water and air so are perfect for a closed ecosystem, like a floating garden. Looking at Saraceno’s ‘floating gardens’ we are invited to imagine industrialised cities with similar floating bubbles containing gardens hovering on the skyline, thereby making green parks accessible in places where they had not previously been. Watch | Installation of Biospheres Tomás Saraceno ‘Biosphere cluster’ 2009 Hungarian-born, Paris-based architect Yona Friedman and the British group of architects Archigram are also key influences on the artist. Friedman and Archigram created designs for futuristic modular and mobile buildings, many of which were hypothetical designs that remain unrealised. This is similar to the way that Saraceno presents his installations as designs for possible dwellings but ultimately chooses not to realise them in the architectural field. Rather, Saraceno draws from these architects to profoundly rethink the parameters of architecture and its nexus with art. Though the forms and ideas found in Tomas Saraceno’s Biosphere sculptures are layered and complex, the art works have a sense of physicallightness and wonder. The experience of weaving through the threadsof rope extending out from the works and of looking up at the Biosphere works appearing to levitate in the air gives a wonderful physicality to theseideas. While the proposition of clusters of biosphere cities in the sky may beutopian, it is a reminder that contemporary art provides space in which wecan imagine a profoundly different new future.
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    15 mirrored spheres drift in GOMA

    Long fascinated by the air, Argentinian-born, Berlin-based artist Tomás Saraceno has created a major new commission — a mesmerising suspended installation — Drift: A cosmic web of thermodynamic rhythms 2022 (illustrated). Saraceno’s Drift engages the poetic and imaginative potential of air. The spheres are part transparent and part reflective; some float above the viewer at different heights moving gently as if breathing, while others float in apparent stillness. As they catch and refract the light, they remind us of the complex dynamics of the air we rely on. Watch | ‘Drift’ installation time-lapse Watch | Tomás Saraceno discusses his colossal installation ‘Drift’ Tomás Saraceno ‘Drift: A cosmic web of thermodynamic rhythms’ 2022 DELVE DEEPER: Tomás Saraceno’s Biospheres The installation Drift expands on Saraceno’s earlier works based on infrared radiation balloons launched into the upper reaches of the atmosphere by the French Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), Paris, where he was artist‑in‑residence in 2012. The artist explains: The sculptures, made of two different lightweight materials, are experimental models and chart a path towards sustainable human flight technologies. In the world, the mirrored section would reflect the Sun’s radiation, controlling the temperature inside, preventing overheating during the day. The transparent part helps to maintain the temperature inside the envelope during the night and hence its buoyancy. It holds the infrared radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface — the solar heat the planet accumulates over a day. Drawing just enough heat, but not too much, would enable a fluctuating trajectory, a floating choreography in the air, free from fossil fuels, powered only by the thermodynamics of the planet. Working across the fields of science, engineering, art, philosophy and community organising, in 2015 Saraceno founded the Aerocene Foundation, inviting us to join him in a new era which he calls the ‘Aerocene’. As he says: The international Aerocene community calls for a different way of living independent from fossil fuels. More deeply attuned to our environment, new infrastructures are imagined through the process of working in collaboration with each other, our ecologies and the atmosphere we rely on.