tomás saraceno brings illuminated spiderwebs, reflective spheres and more to palazzo strozzi

from february 22 through july 19, 2020, palazzo strozzi in florence hosts a major exhibition devoted to tomás saraceno, whose multi-disciplinary practice encompasses art, social and life sciences. tomás saraceno. aria, curated by arturo galansino, greets visitors with a site-specific installation in the institution’s courtyard comprised of large, reflective spheres. the piece embody’s saraceno’s interest in challenging our approach to environmental issues by envisioning a future free from borders and fossil fuels — ideals propelled by the interdisciplinary artistic community initiated by the artist titled, ‘aerocene‘. the sculpture builds on saraceno’s research into solar balloons capable of floating using only the heat of the sun, and encourages visitors to rethink the way we inhabit our planet in a poetic way.

image ® ela bialkowska, OKNO studio 2020

the exhibition at palazzo strozzi is organized around saraceno’s ‘arachnomancy’ cards — a set of thirty-three cards that pay homage to the interconnectedness of all things. viewers are invited to consider the spider and its web, where the ‘arachnomancy’ determine and announce each room in the exhibition. the composition composes new threads that connect otherwise disparate elements.

saraceno’s ‘arachnomancy’ cards aid in transforming the palazzo into an arena of experimentation and participation, and a pathway to imaginative experiences. visitors are urged to to rethink the ways in which humans inhabit the planet now and in the future, prioritizing practices of multispecies care, over anthropocentric ideologies.

image ® ela bialkowska, OKNO studio 2020

the exhibition continues with large-scale installations, allowing visitors to immerse themselves in evocative settings suggesting alternative futures.

‘connectome‘ is a set of suspended sculptures that suggest weaire-phelan geometries — a complex 3-dimensional structure representing an idealized foam of equal-sized bubbles. ‘sounding the air‘ and ‘webs of at-tent(s)ion‘ contain the sensorial worlds of spiders and webs and the elemental atmospheres they compose; ‘how to entangle the universe in a spider web?‘ is a study into the relationship between dimensions, as communicated by a spiderweb; ‘particular matter(s) jam session‘ and ‘aerographies‘ are both installations that look into the connections between cosmic dust and the dust that litters our planet and lungs; meanwhile, ‘a thermodynamic imaginary‘ is an an absorbing experience of the universe’s desire to defy scale; and finally ‘flying garden‘ forms a sculptural provocation that seeks to displace our conventional notions of boundaries and territories.

image ® ela bialkowska, OKNO studio 2020

the exhibition at palazzo strozzi offers visitors an opportunity to experience saraceno’s vision of the world and its possibilities. responding to the historic architecture of the site, the artist seeks to create a dialogue between the renaissance and the contemporary world — a shift from the idea of ‘man at the centre of the world’ to the conception of ‘man as part of a universe’.

image ® ela bialkowska, OKNO studio 2020