Sculpting Light: Christo’s “Big Air Package”
It's refreshing for a contemporary artist to give us a clue as to what we might be looking at. The title of Christo's latest project, Big Air Package, sums it up quite succinctly: it's a big package of air. Very big. The size comes as no surprise; Christo and his late wife and collaborator Jeanne-Claude have long been known for their installations of sometimes baffling size.
Described by the artist as 'the largest-ever inflated envelope without a skeleton', Big Air Package can also stake its claim as the world's biggest indoor sculpture. The enormous fabric dome uses in excess of an incredible 20,000 square meters of translucent polyester and 4,500 meters of rope and reaches a towering height of 90 meters at the Gasometer Oberhausen in West Germany. Big Air Package almost entirely fills this exhibition space (fittingly, a former gas tank), leaving just a narrow walkway for visitors to walk around the sculpture.
But why walk around it when you can go inside? Ushered in by air locks, viewers encounter a massively vacuous, somewhat otherworldly pristine white space lit up evenly by the Gasometer's skylights and 60 projectors. Shaped by the dome, this pure white light becomes something of a physical thing that inhabits the colossal space, and suddenly the sculpture seems like a whole lot more than just a packet of air.
Christo likens this towering space to a great cathedral - illuminated from above as if it were sheets of stained glass, the piece is an architectural experiment in natural and electric light. Call it what you want, but we call it great design, a striking aesthetic structure that doesn't get in the way of the experience it offers. Creative Use of Space at its absolute purest.
Dwarfed by Christo's modern cathedral and immersed in celestial light, feeling small never felt so good.
If you find yourself in Germany and aching to see Big Air Package in person, jump on the autobahn with the Gasometer Oberhausen as your final destination. The installation is inflated and ready for visitors now through December 30, 2013. More at www.christojeanneclaude.net/
Share This Article
