A. Miranda, Carolina. “Painting the Sun and Sculpting Fog.” ARTnews Mar. 2013: 60-62. Print.
The Exploratorium in San Francisco, California displayed artwork created by Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya that replicated a dense fog cloud. Nakaya’s sculptures were suspended over a pedestrian bridge and blended into the real fog present in San Francisco. Nakaya’s sculpture is described as “part artwork, part scientific experiment–a cross-disciplinary tool for analyzing and understanding the natural world” (62). Bob Miller’s 1975 Sun Painting is also in the Exploratorium, described as a “luminous projection of refracted light” (60). Amy Balkin, a San Francisco-based artist, created a “detailed guide to the earth’s atmosphere” that “explores the ways in which humans have historically used and occupied it–from atomic tests conducted in the troposphere to the heaps of space junk that pollute the exosphere” (62). I agree with Balkin’s statement that our “atmosphere is a political space” in the sense that the environment and the efforts to conserve it has become a political and economical problem (62). I found that Nakaya’s fog sculpture speaks to the ways in which we as humans can replicate and mimic nature, but we cannot mimic its capacity for renewable energy. I think combining Nakaya’s fog sculpture with Balkin’s environmental awareness creates a contrast: Nakaya’s creating an artificial nature while Balkin highlights human’s abuse and exploitation of nature and natural spaces. I think Nakaya’s sculpture works in the same sense as Midori-San and Spore 1.1 in creating a sense of empathy; it allows humans to see a fog cloud in suspension in order to allow the beauty of nature to be revealed. Instead of fog being seen as a hazard or a nuisance (in the specific context of driving cars) Nakaya’s sculpture allows spectators to see a natural, environmental occurrence without the ephemeral, fleeting quality of real fog. It’s interesting to me how this sculpture could almost be seen as an improvement on a natural occurrence because of its permanence and ability to be moved and suspended above different places that normally wouldn’t have fog.
