At the warming hand of aerosolar rhythms, Tomás Saraceno’s Poetic Cosmos of the Breath inhales upward, its glowing body ripples through the sun’s gaze in a cascading invitation to sense out new choreographies of perception.

For the International Artist Airshow in London’s Gunpowder Park, commissioned by the Arts Catalyst, the artist was invited to present the dynamic installation. Poetic Cosmos of the Breath is a solar dome with a diameter that reaches upward of 60 metres: a glowing production of fine iridescent foil, anchored at the bottom of the ocean of air with sandbags on the ground. At the turn of dawn on September 22^nd 2007, the billowing sculpture slowly inflated with air, its body growing in conversation with the sun. Aided by a group of participants, Poetic Cosmos of the Breath is a performative event and an invitation to collectively attune to the natural rhythms encircling us above: the clouds, the sun and meandering spheres of planetary currents.

As the sun rises, air inside the sculpture heats up, causing it to lift and elevate the iridescent foil into a cascade of reflective and refractive scapes. The irradiating surface of the foil illuminates in alignment with Gunpowder Park’s natural environment, redirecting and expanding the reflections of the sky and its ever changing, boundary-blurring weather patterns.

In his artistic practice, Saraceno expands on the aesthetic experience as a synesthetic moment, encouraging its viewers to ponder the gamut and boundaries of our sensorial perception. The iridescent surface traces solar rays, casting a kaleidoscope of colours, shadows and reflections inward. Air and light lend the sculpture its amorphous form, inviting a shift in our perceptual norms, engendering the imaginative capacities of humans to consider different modes of being and futural dreaming – ones that embodies a symbiotic relationship with the Earth, the sun and its theatre of atmospheric entities.