Artwork Detail
Cosmic Filaments
2019
Argentine, b. 1973
Dichroic filters, polyacrylic panels, stainless steel, and polyester rope
17?6? x 53? x 27?8?
University purchase with funds from the William T. Kemper Foundation and Art on Campus fund, 2019
WU 2019.0003
Tomás Saraceno's experimental artistic practice combines the conventions of art, architecture, and the natural sciences to expand ideas about being and inhabiting the world. Cosmic Filaments is a site-specific installation comprising three iridescent objects that hang from the ceiling, a single polyhedron-shaped module out of which grow two larger clusters of three and five modules that together span the distance of the Museum's lobby.They are suspended in a network of ropes that replicate the tensile strength, flexibility, and absorbing visual intricacies of a spider web. The three geometric modules simultaneously evoke interstellar configurations, microscopic cellular systems, and biospheres in which humans could eventually exist.
This work is directly related to Saraceno's project Air-Port-City / Cloud City (2001-present), a visionary proposal for a city in the sky consisting of a series of bubble-like cells fueled by solar energy that migrate and recombine as freely as clouds themselves. Like Air-Port-City / Cloud City, Cosmic Filaments suggests a utopian vision of life in the air while also acting out a material and spatial investigation into issues of sustainability, mobility, cohabitation, and collectivity in the present.
FA19