Tomas Saraceno at The Shed

This web is a tiny part of Tomas Saraceno’s current show at The Shed in Hudson Yards, but like the rest of the exhibition, it elicits wonder at the natural world, prompting greater respect for the web of interspecies relationships around us.  Housed behind glass and spot lit from below, webs created by various species of spiders in Saraceno’s Berlin studio demonstrate the arthropods’ ability to communicate and understand the world around them through motion perceived via webs.  Elsewhere in the show, visitors are invited to physically enter a version of a web in the immersive installation ‘Free the Air:  How to hear the universe in a spider/web’ by settling on a web of wire mesh netting to listen to a soundtrack that translates spider movements into sound.  (On view at The Shed through April 17th).

Tomas Saraceno, installation view (detail) of ‘Webs of At-tent(s)ion,’ spider frames, spider silk, carbon fibers, lights, 2020.