Next summer, 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.