Tomás Saraceno’s first solo exhibition in Austria will be on view at the 21er Haus from 24 June to 30 August. Saraceno works at the intersection of art, science, and architecture. In his artistic practice he concentrates on the development of speculative social counter-proposals suggesting a more sustainable treatment of the environment.

With his works, Saraceno encourages us to review our relationship to the earth and the sun and to think about new ways of life and energy circulation. For more than ten years now he has pursued the idea of flying cities, the so-called Air-Port-Cities or Cloud Cities. These metropolises consist of floating elements that cannot only be lived in, but which also stay flexible and have the potential of constantly forming new structures – similar to clouds. At the 21er Haus, Saraceno will present his vision of using the light of the sun for hovering dwellings in the form of a room-spanning installation and additional sculptures from his series Becoming Aerosolar. Moreover, visitors of the exhibition, who are invited to bring along used plastic bags, will be provided with tools and instructions so that they will be able to build their own lighter-than-air sculptures and try out Saraceno’s ideas themselves.

Tomás Saraceno was born in Tucumán, Argentine, in 1973 and lives and works in Berlin. His works have been on display all over the world in more than fifty solo and more than one hundred group exhibitions, such as at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Museum Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the K21 in Düsseldorf, and the Biennales of Venice, São Paulo, Lyon, and Moscow.

While preparing this exhibition, the 21er Haus invites the public to build a lighter-than-air sculpture from re-used plastic bags.

As of now you can bring your used and cleaned plastic bags (the thinner, the better) to the collection point at the 21er Haus. Starting in mid-June, a new floating sculpture will be jointly created in our evening workshops. The first test flight will take place within the framework of the exhibition’s opening during our summer party on 21 June.