Tomás Saraceno - in orbit. Spidermen in the web.

By suspending a steel web above the foyer of the Ständehaus in Düsseldorf, where the art collection of the German land of Nordreno Vestfalia is located, artist Tomás Saraceno experiments with a new form of artistic communication, where spectators become participants and experience all the classic emotions of man.



Artist Tomás Saraceno drew inspiration directly from nature - for years observing the intricate patterns of the webs spun by different kinds of spiders – in his installation called “in orbit”, suspended 25 metres above the foyer of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen in Düsseldorf .





And he came up with a really unique artistic-spatial installation. Spread over three levels under the glazed roof of the K21 Ständehaus, this artwork directly targets the spectator, who can climb up and walk across the webs, becoming intensely engaged in the potent experience of flying and falling. 



The structure looks a bit like a sea of clouds and becomes not only an experiment of space and art but also a symbol for our world of “the web”: if you walk across the wire structure with other people, you “link” up with them through the vibrations that run through the steel mesh and between the transparent balls dispersed across the webbing.



When you enter “in orbit” you actually become part of the exhibited artwork, and at the same time you can observe other museum visitors, mutually swapping roles.



In addition to being a real challenge for brave visitors who don’t suffer from vertigo, “in orbit” by Tomás Saraceno is also part of a broader visionary art and architecture project by the same artist, entitled “Air-Port-City”: a suspended city of the future, not just a utopian dream but a city that responds to the growing crisis of our overpopulated and ecologically challenged planet.



In his works, Tomás Saraceno combines his close observation of nature with architectural research, like another Buckminster Fuller and he is particularly attentive to networked relationships – in the broadest sense of the term, so extremely topical.

(Christiane Bürklein)

“In Orbit” installation
Project: Tomás Saraceno http://www.tomassaraceno.com/
Location: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany, http://www.kunstsammlung.de/
until Autumn 2014
Image Ständehaus K21 exterior: ph. Monheim, courtesy of Kunstammlung NRW, Ständehaus K21 interior: ph. Richter, courtesy of Kunstammlung NRW
All images of "In Orbit" Courtesy of Tomás Saraceno Studio, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.