2-Dimensional Webs Archive/Maps and Traces

 

 

 

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2-Dimensional Webs Archive/Maps and Traces

Solitary semi-social mapping of Ceginus by a duet of Nephila senegalensis – four weeks, a triplet of Cyrtophora citricola – three weeks (detail), 2018

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2-Dimensional Webs Archive/Maps and Traces

Solitary semi-social mapping of Ceginus by a duet of Nephila senegalensis – four weeks, a triplet of Cyrtophora citricola – three weeks (detail), 2018

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2-Dimensional Webs Archive/Maps and Traces

Solitary semi-social mapping of HS 1700+6416 by a solo Nephila senegalensis – one week and a solo Cyrtophora citricola – three weeks (detail), 2016

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A spider/web begins with a single thread of silk, cast out into the air, loose and undulating until pulled taut by the wind.

 

Each thread of spider silk is thus a web in becoming, adrift on air until it meets a surface that becomes an attachment point, and establishes productive tension, bridging the spider/webs ability to write their passage, their drifting and ways forward.

Solitary semi-social mapping of HS 1700+6416 by a solo Nephila senegalensis – one week and a solo Cyrtophora citricola – three weeks (detail), 2016

Solitary semi-social mapping of HS 1700+6416 by a solo Nephila senegalensis – one week and a solo Cyrtophora citricola – three weeks (detail), 2016

Solitary semi-social mapping of HS 1700+6416 by a solo Nephila senegalensis – one week and a solo Cyrtophora citricola – three weeks (detail), 2016

Solitary semi-social mapping of HS 1700+6416 by a solo Nephila senegalensis – one week and a solo Cyrtophora citricola – three weeks (detail), 2016

 

Each thread of silk marks an arc of movement: where the spider’s first aerial threads are forays into an imagined future, and the tensioned threads of the assembled web mark the axes along which the spider has already travelled.

 

The spider/web is thus a living trace of movements and temporalities in tension: past, present and future.

Tomás Saraceno’s Spider/Web Prints offer a different way to read and interpret the architecture of the spider/web: as a topological map of movements and temporalities that trace the intricate complexities of these silken sculptures. Each Spider/Web Print is a 2-dimensional manifestation of a 3-Dimensional web, whose threads have been treated with a lightweight combination of ink and cosmic dust, and fixed to archival paper, creating a drawn sculptural presence.

These prints retain the structural complexity and depth of the spider/web, while offering new insights into the assemblage of fine silken threads of which it is composed.

 

Spider/web prints become the real-life maps of suspended cities inhabited by spider/webs.

Solitary semi-social mapping of Ceginus by a duet of Nephila senegalensis – four weeks, a triplet of Cyrtophora citricola – three weeks, 2018
© Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno, 2018

Solitary semi-social mapping of Ceginus by a duet of Nephila senegalensis – four weeks, a triplet of Cyrtophora citricola – three weeks, 2018

© Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno, 2018


 

 

 

Aria
Aria
·
ON AIR
ON AIR
·
ALBEDO
ALBEDO
·
Cumulus
Cumulus
·
...