ARTWORK IN FOCUS: TOMÁS SARACENO, ZONAL HARMONIC 1N 150/9, 2017

25 November - 1 December 2020

Olivier Malingue is pleased to announce ‘Artwork in Focus’, the second chapter of the gallery’s ‘In Focus’ series. Every week our website will present a viewing room featuring an artwork available for sale. Each chapter of this series will include visuals and information about the piece presented, giving insights on artists and artworks that have left a significant mark on modern and contemporary art. For all enquiries about available artworks, please email sales@oliviermalingue.com or click on the enquire button below.
Tomás SARACENO

b. 1973

Zonal Harmonic 1N 150/9, 2017

Metal, polyester rope, steel thread

90 x 160 x 150 cm, ∅ 150 cm
35 ⅜ x 63 x 59 ⅛ in, ∅ 59 ⅛ in

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Zonal Harmonic 1N 150/9 (2017) embodies Tomás Saraceno’s polymorphous artistic practice, which interconnects numerous fields and disciplines. The Argentinean-born, Berlin-based artist initially trained as an architect, and is well known for incorporating architecture in his practice as well as numerous transdisciplinary interests, including philosophy, sociology, anthropology, music, ethology, engineering and astrophysics.
Zonal Harmonic 1N 150/9 (2017) is a perfectly balanced mobile composed of metal, polyester rope and steel thread, with each structure held in place through mutual tension. Its interconnected rings, looping around a central point is reminiscent of an atomic structure, like a diagrammatic representation of a scientific form. With a delicate, yet assertive presence, it is almost celestial in appearance, and the simplicity and sharpness of its lines and curves could also represent an unknown planetary system, the sweeping arcs suggestive of orbital trajectories.
Suspended structures appear throughout Saraceno’s practice, having worked for over a decade on the futuristic project, Aerocene. This ongoing body of work explores a new environmental vision, in which the world is punctuated by the floating movements of its inhabitants, effected without fuel, simply through the differences in temperature between masses of air and the interiors of atmospheric sculptures. Saraceno stated that Aerocene’s “activities are manifested in the testing and dissemination of lighter-than-air sculptures, which become buoyant only by the heath of the sun and infra-red radiation from the surface of Earth, without fossil fuels, helium, hydrogen, solar panels and batteries”. This eco-conscious dream was conceived as an alternative to the Anthropocene, a term which was coined in 1995 by Paul Crutzen, a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, defined as the era in which the planet is shaped by anthropic activities.
The interconnected structures and suspended forms of Zonal Harmonic 1N 150/9 (2017) are recurrent in Saraceno’s practice, and have been used to challenge the traditional architectural styles conventionally assigned to the creation of human habitats. While elevated and self balancing in the air, the work is reminiscent of the structures Saraceno created for Cloud Cities, an ongoing series of monumental, utopian installations which features interconnected, geometrical modules made of transparent and reflective materials, and investigates alternative ways for humans to inhabit the world with minimal environmental impact.
With its light appearance and its nature of the potential suspended habitat, Zonal Harmonic 1N 150/9 (2017) also recalls Saraceno’s ongoing project Arachnophilia, which studies arachnid behaviour, with a special focus on the construction of the spiders’ webs. In 2018, the exhibition On Air - Carte Blanche à Tomás Saraceno at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, included large scale installations of suspended spiders webs, examining the intricate organic structures and exploring the vibrations created by the spiders themselves. Web-like structures, similar to Zonal Harmonic 1N 150/9 (2017) were also echoed in the large-scale interactive installation Algo-r(h)i(y)thms, which was formed of a monumental network of interconnected strings which, when touched or plucked created layers of vibration and sound, creating a multi-sensory experience.
This work was included in Suspension – A History of Abstract Hanging Sculpture 1918 – 2018, curated by Matthieu Poirier. The exhibition presented more than 50 works related to this little-known sculptural genre, produced by 30 artists, including Ruth Asawa, Louise Bourgeois, Daniel Buren, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Olafur Eliasson, François Morellet, Ernesto Neto, Joel Shapiro, and Cerith Wyn Evans. Across two exhibitions, exceptional loans from institutions and collections around the world were presented for two months at Olivier Malingue in London, and for two weeks in the 1500m² space of the Palais d’Iéna in Paris, where an unprecedented dialogue was created between the works and the modern classicism of the monumental space, designed and built by architect Auguste Perret during the 1930s.

The exhibition was accompanied by Matthieu Poirier's book Suspension, published by Olivier Malingue and Skira. The book has been recently selected for the Top 10 shortlist for the Mayfair Publication Award, chosen by art critic and writer Hettie Judah. The book is available to purchase from the gallery for £35. To purchase, please email Thomas Marsan: thomas@oliviermalingue.com

Find out more about the exhibition here.
Biography

Born in 1973 in Tucumán, Argentina, Tomás Saraceno studied art and architecture in Buenos Aires, Frankfurt am Main, and Venice, and completed the International Space Studies Program at NASA in 2009. Tomás Saraceno lives and works in Berlin, having first established his studio in Frankfurt am Main in 2005. The studio relocated to Berlin in 2012.

In the past two decades Saraceno has collaborated with MIT (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Max Planck Institute, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), Imperial College (London) and Natural History Museum (London). Past residencies include Centre National d’Études Spatiales (2014–2015), MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (2012–ongoing) and Atelier Calder (2010), among others. Recent exhibitions include: Event Horizon: Tomás Saraceno, Cisternerne, Copenhagen (2020); Aria, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2020); 58th Biennale di Venezia - May You Live In Interesting Times (2019); and ON AIR - Carte blanche à Tomás Saraceno, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018).

His work is included in international collections the Bauhaus Museum, Weimar; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Nationalgalerie, and Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.

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ARTWORK IN FOCUS: TOMÁS SARACENO, ZONAL HARMONIC 1N 150/9, 2017

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