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until 20.12. | #4847ARTatBerlin | neugerriemschneider (Linienstrasse) shows from 1 November 2025 (Opening: 31.10.) a solo exhibition by artist Tomás Saraceno.
The artist Tomás Saraceno’s second solo exhibition at neugerriemschneider, tomás saracenoi, focuses on water cycles as material and metaphor, ahead of his 2026 presentation at Haus der Kunst in Munich. The title refers to Heteropoda saracenoi, a spider species named in honor of the artist by arachnologist Peter Jäger.
The exhibition builds on Saraceno’s long-term collaboration with indigenous communities from the Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc in northern Argentina. The water of these salt flats is both a spiritual source and a contested resource—shaped by exploitative practices of supposedly green energy corporations that threaten not only the water itself but also ancestral knowledge and living memory. This context deeply informs the works on view.
Upon entering the gallery, visitors encounter a freestanding toilet—a familiar object, yet modified to reuse handwashing water for flushing. This intervention embodies Saraceno’s attempt to find new pathways into water cycles—at once sculpture and functional prototype of a system that already operates in his studio and could save up to 14,000 liters of water per year if implemented in the gallery context.
Nearby, prints based on salt crystallization record the transition from water to mineral, evoking the delicate equilibrium on which the interdependent ecosystems of the Salinas Grandes have thrived for millennia.
The exhibition invites immersion into these transformative cycles, continuing in a central space where rainwater, partly collected in the artist’s studio, mirrors the salt flats’ reflective surfaces and interacts with sculptural works to create a cosmic environment. Light, shadow, and movement intertwine in a space where water and life cycles resonate.
Saraceno further explores the origins of arachnophobia and other fears as mutable states. Through over a decade of collaboration with spiders, he has redefined the cultural perception of these beings and their architectures. His practice provokes reflection on the cultivation and instrumentalization of fear, and the ways boundaries between human and non-human, kin and enemy, have historically shaped violence and exclusion.
In a new series of framed works, Saraceno rewrites the encyclopedic entry on arachnophobia, transforming the lexicon of fear into a web of kinship. This approach underlies Arachnophilia, a project community founded by the artist that unites diverse knowledge systems through a shared affinity for spiders and their webs—understood as both silk architectures and cosmological diagrams reflecting the complexity of life.
With its filmic, sculptural, and graphic works, tomás saracenoi represents more than two decades of artistic research into interconnectedness, ecology, and empathy across species.
Works by Tomás Saraceno (b. 1973) have been presented in numerous international institutions, including Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing (2024); Serpentine Galleries, London (2023); The Shed, New York (2022); Towada Art Center, Towada (2021); Cisternerne, Copenhagen (2020); Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2020); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); MAAT, Lisbon (2018); Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (2017); SFMOMA, San Francisco (2016); Grand Palais, Paris (2015); NTU CCA Singapore (2015); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012); Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2012); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2011); and Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2010). Saraceno lives and works in Berlin.
Opening: Friday, 31 October 2025, 6:00–9:00 p.m.
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 1 November to Saturday, 20 December 2025
To the Gallery
Bildunterschrift Titel: Tomás Saraceno, 2025, Ausstellungsansicht, neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Exhibition Tomás Saraceno – Galerie neugerriemschneider | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
