Cloud City on the Met Roof
One of the frequent but
always impressive installations in the beautiful roof garden of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 5th Avenue), Tomás Saraceno’s Cloud City (running through November 4th), much like its predecessors, does not fail to
impress. Complex geometric oddities
composed of thick glass and mirrored surfaces come together into an oddly
shaped construction resembling a habitat.
The resulting structure arches up, with no discernible pattern, above
the roof. The Argentinian Saraceno’s
intended goal is, as he says, “to defy gravity,” and he has accomplished this,
up to a point. Cloud City does not actually leave the ground, of course, but it
has a strange but pleasing way of resting that implies that it might, at any
minute, if supplied with a crew and the right sort of fuel.
The exterior of Cloud City, while visually astounding
from an analytical and logical standpoint, is not the only attraction. Similarly to an earlier Met roof creation, Doug
and Mike Starn’s Big Bambú, Cloud City contains, within its rigid,
reflective walls, an iron spiral staircase reaching slowly up to its highest
point. Each receptacle that forms a part
of Cloud City serves as its own
viewing platform, offering amazing panoramas of the New York skyline, above
the greenery of the surrounding Central Park.
Some are sturdier than others. A
few had little or no support, and the highest would only support two people at
once and was worrying creaky with just one occupant. Leaning into the rails at the edge of Cloud City’s many openings to the
outside world gives one the feeling of resting against the prow of a ship
moving against the wind to New York, but a far-off port in the distance.
Space is different in Cloud
City, especially considering the difficulty telling the difference between
mirror and window. This can cause some
confusion but also wonderment. It’s
another world inside, a world where the three dimensions collide
entertainingly, and all seemingly held together by thin black wire that pools
into balls like metallic yarn in the center of some clusters of mirrored
boxes. (Is boxes the right word? Cloud City’s shape is tough to
define.) Occasionally one will look for
one’s self in the mirror and discover the edge of a taller-than-average tree,
or vice versa. It’s an unusual
experience Saraceno has created, but not an unpleasant one.
I can’t say if Cloud
City has any specific meaning (Saraceno only reveals that it’s “[about] the ways we inhabit… our environment”), but it seems to me a friendly
and hopeful exhibition of the artist’s beliefs about taking part in art. A passive view of an opus may be a fine
experience, for those who prefer it, but, Saraceno seems to say, art should
take up more space, literally and in the viewer’s life. People who take in art must also act as
components of it in order to achieve the full experience the art intends. Cloud
City is interactive without being childish, and beautiful without being
haughty. One could say it’s the meeting
of two worlds, and a good intersection it is.
That Saraceno means to make Cloud Cities mainstream as more personal
ways of “inhabiting our environment” (that is to say, houses) is unlikely,
unless he is more radical than previously thought. But it’s nice to imagine that, one day, we will
all live in asymmetrical boxes of metal on wide roof gardens on the Upper East
Side with unbelievable views across the park.
It may be wishful thinking, or perhaps even stupid, but making one’s
home among such beauty couldn’t help but change a person’s outlook for the
better. One afternoon spent in Cloud City, for the time being, will do
the trick.
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