Tanya Bonakdar, New York. April 14 to June 9 2018
I just walked out of the Bonakdar space and I feel like I need to recalibrate my inner ear. Walking into a Saraceno show is less like visiting a gallery and more like stepping into a high-tech observatory run by spiders.
The “Hybrid Webs”
The downstairs gallery is dark, dominated by these haunting, backlit vitrines. Inside them aren’t sculptures in the traditional sense, but “Hybrid Webs.” The result is this ghostly, architectural lace that looks like a 3D map of the early universe. It’s fragile, terrifying, and beautiful. There’s something deeply humbling about realizing that a tiny invertebrate has a better grasp of structural engineering than most humans.
2026 Retrospective Note:
Looking back at this entry eight years later, Saraceno feels even more prophetic. In 2018, his talk of “interspecies collaboration” felt like a poetic metaphor. Today, as we navigate the complexities of ecological collapse and AI-driven systems, his idea that we need to listen to the “vibrations” of other forms of life feels less like art and more like a survival manual.
