Blaffer Gallery
University of Houston
120 Fine Arts Building
TX 77204-4018
Houston, TX
Texas
North America
p: 713 743 9528
m:
f: 713 743 9525
w: www.blaffergallery.org
Tomás Saraceno, The Endless Photo, 2006 C-print mounted on aluminum behind Plexiglas; edition 5 of 5 39 15/16 x 55 7/8 in. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, NY
Tomás Saraceno: Lighter than Air May 14 - July 31, 2010 Opening Reception: Thursday, May 13, 6 - 8 p.m
Blaffer Gallery presents Tomás Saraceno: Lighter than Air. Organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and showcasing Saraceno’s installations, sculptures, and photographs made since 2003, the touring exhibition is the artist’s first large-scale museum presentation in the United States. By reexamining the conventions of art and architecture, Saraceno suggests imaginative solutions to complex questions about how we populate and coexist in the world. His architectural proposals use the interdependencies of systems to ponder ecological questions that go beyond the natural world. Specifically, the artist contrives environments that anticipate new sociocultural platforms for experiencing and interacting with our surroundings. Following in the tradition of architects and theorists such as R. Buckminster Fuller, Peter Cook, Yona Friedman, and other visionaries, Saraceno looks to scientific principles and technological innovations to develop ideas for future sustainable communities and new models for social interactions. Conceived by the artist as an entire organism, the exhibition Lighter than Air closely integrates the displayed works formally and structurally to create a network of relationships as well as illustrate the breadth of his practice.
Two of the works in the exhibition will be powered by solar panels connected to a web of wires, receivers, and generators. One is 32SW Stay Green/Flying Garden/Air-Port-City (2007), a self-sustainable greenhouse outfitted with an irrigation system that waters grass on a cluster of inflatable spheres. Also on view are photographs as well as a wall-sized drawing, Air-Port-City (2009), depicting the artist’s vision for a floating city. Challenging concepts of nationhood and land ownership with his freely flying cities, Saraceno has created an urban form where residents are not bound to geopolitical borders. Tomás Saraceno was born in Tucamán, Argentina, in 1973, and lives in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Tomás Saraceno: Lighter than Air is organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. The exhibition is made possible by generous support from John Taft. Additional support is provided by the Harpo Foundation. Tomás Saraceno’s artist residency at the Walker was made possible by the Nimoy Foundation. Artist materials were provided by 3M.
Gabriel Kuri: Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab
Organized by Blaffer Gallery director and chief curator Claudia Schmuckli, this ten year survey is the first solo museum exhibition dedicated to Gabriel Kuri in the United States. Kuri began his studies at Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Mexico City, spent four years working in the studio of sculptor Gabriel Orozco, and in 1993 moved to London to attend Goldmsith’s College where he studied with Liam Gillick. He now lives and works in Mexico City and Brussels, Belgium. Kuri’s spatial and sculptural accumulations combine the social tone of Conceptual Art with the poetry of Arte Povera. His work is a careful investigation into the physical and semantic weight of materials and their sculptural and allegorical abilities to sustain, shape, and accumulate meaning.
