Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds takes you to a dreamland where your cares are lifted into the stratosphere amid the gentle roar of distant fireworks. Lost in the euphoria of unanticipated joy, visitors to the Rossyln Artisphere’s exhibit have a chance to experience a literal cloud nine in the center of a balloon whirlwind.
The brainchild of a collaboration between Warhol and electrical engineer Billy Kluver, the 1964 project that bore the first Silver Clouds exhibit in New York originally aimed at creating a gallery filled with floating light bulbs. Instead, Kluver brought Warhol the heat-sealable material he was working with, and the artist folded it into airy clouds. These fanciful balloons have made their rounds since their first debut at the Leo Castelli gallery in 1966, and this month the Artisphere is showcasing one of the largest east coast installations of Warhol’s creation.
The clouds themselves, one hundred and fifty strong, are made of a metalized plastic film filled with helium and oxygen. Fans placed strategically throughout the gallery waft the balloons on currents of air, enveloping the viewers on every side. They drift in a clockwise rotation around the center of the space, creating a mirrored wall of balloons pressing inwards against the participants.
The Artisphere’s gallery displays a very relevant Leonard Bernstein quote: “Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world—the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.”
Warhol creates a new ethereal world with his installation, one high up in the sky where irrational joy is not just accepted, but expected.
Silver Clouds defies the typical art viewer’s experience. Warhol’s genius lies in the interactive quality and assertive nature of the exhibit as the clouds continually bump up against the viewers, forcing them to take an active part in the artwork. Children and adults sit on the floor in identical positions, playing with the balloons and posing for pictures. Against the blank white walls, the shadows of human bodies and metallic balloons intertwine in a display that enhances the action occurring at the center of the exhibit.
The clouds are on view at the Artisphere every Wednesday through Sunday until Oct. 20. This tribute to Warhol is central to the Artisphere’s goal of connecting artists and viewers through new technologies that emphasize interactive participation in art.
The fascinating quality of Warhol’s installation is its ability to bring together complete strangers in the same moment of incredulous delight. Hipsters and CEOs alike lose all social pretenses, frolicking amid an onslaught of balloons.
