The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) presents Microscale, Macroscale, and Beyond: Large-Scale Implications of Small-Scale Experiments, Tomás Saraceno’s first solo exhibition in the USA. The exhibition, which is part of BAM/PFA’s acclaimed MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art, features photographs, small-scale sculptures, and a large-scale installation created specifically for the Berkeley Art Museum.

Saraceno uses practical principles from engineering, physics, chemistry, aeronautics, and architecture to experiment and re-think the way we live in relation to one another. He works regularly with materials otherwise unknown outside of the scientific community, such as aerogel, a sponge-like insulating substance developed for use in the aerospace industry. Its incredibly light weight (only three times that of air itself) and strong structural properties make it an ideal potential building material for Saraceno to exemplify his vision of the future, which is perhaps best embodied in the ongoing project Air-Port-City. Air-Port-City envisions networks of habitable structures that float in the air. The freedom of their airborne location allows these sections of living space, organized within a modular cellular framework, to join together like clouds, creating aerial cities in constant physical transformation. Saraceno describes these kinds of structures as capable of embodying more elastic and dynamic rules related to political, geographical, and cultural borders.

On the microscale, Saraceno experiments with properties of suspension and soap film structures, creating devices that demonstrate the feasibility of his utopian ideas. For the Berkeley Art Museum, Saraceno created a site-specific installation from his series Flying Garden, filled with Tillandsias and Spanish moss, plants that derive their nutrients from the air. Conceptually, this air-sufficient agricultural model serves as an accompaniment to other platforms for habitation or play, but also suggests the human self-sufficiency that his project envisions.

Saraceno continues the tradition of visionary architects before him, including Buckminster Fuller, Frei Otto, Archigram, and the Ant Farm Collective. But his project is equally informed by the present moment-reflecting a consciousness about waste and conservation, striving for a harmonic balance between mediated and natural worlds, and acknowledging the interdependence of individuals to one another.