Artist Spotlight: Tomás Saraceno

It took over three years, but Tomás Saraceno really outdid himself with his current art installation named In Orbit.  This steel web that spans 2500 meters is suspended 25 meters above the piazza of the K21 Standehaus museum in Dusseldorf, Germany.  Just thinking about this, makes me feel a little queasy.  Saraceno studied how spiders' construct their webs for many years, which ultimately became the inspiration for this extraordinary installation. Among the three levels of wire webbing, there are 6 PVC spheres up to 24' in diameter.  Visitors are welcomed to walk 10 at a time among the webbing where they can see the museum patrons below.  Each person can feel the vibration of the other people walking, similar to how a spider can feel it's prey being caught in it's web.  The longer you look, the more the spheres start to look like dew drops caught in a web. In Orbit will be on display until Fall 2014.  Pretty cool...even though I think I would opt for viewing from the sidelines : )

(all images via My Modern Met courtesy of Tomás Saraceno)