Mylar balloons: They’re not Campbell Soup cans, but they may be just as unique.
This Friday, the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art will open its installation of “Silver Clouds,” a work created by American artist Andy Warhol. Warhol is known for his contributions to the Pop Art movement during the mid-20th century.
The exhibit consists of “clouds,” or roaming silver Mylar balloons, with which viewers can interact in the central area of the museum.
“To create a sense of openness, we have created a discreet enclosure comprised of more than 200 strands of fishline that run from the top of the museum’s free-standing walls to the 30-foot ceiling,” said MOCRA director Terry Dempsey, S.J. The fishline will prevent the clouds from floating outside the main hall.
Sixteen fans will also be used in the exhibit, causing the clouds to hover and swirl just above the floor. Viewers should feel as if they’re standing in a large aquarium in which the objects move in slow motion.
“Visitors to MOCRA are invited to nudge, shove and even kick the clouds,” Dempsey said. “There is simply no way that you can hurt them. This will be a totally different experience from most museum experiences, and I know it will delight the visitors.”
Dempsey said that the museum has been in contact with the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh for three years. When he visited the museum in 1998, Dempsey said that “Clouds” caught his eye.
“To me,” he said, “the most unusual and the most enjoyable gallery in the entire museum was the `Silver Clouds’ room. It simply makes people of all ages smile.”
After consulting and working with Thomas Sokolowski, director of the Warhol Museum, Dempsey and Sokolowski determined a way to display “Silver Clouds” in MOCRA.
“It turns out that the `Clouds’ have never been shown in a space as big as ours in the United States,” Dempsey said. “The Warhol Museum ceiling height for the Silver Clouds is about 14 feet. Ours is 30 feet, and the MOCRA room is much longer and wider than the “Silver Clouds” gallery at the Warhol Museum.”
As to why “Clouds” is being shown in MOCRA, a museum of interfaith contemporary art, Dempsey offered this explanation: “As I knew that there was a little -known religious side to Andy Warhol, I saw these “clouds” as a childlike vision of heaven.
“I chose the work because it is so different from the other Warhol works, because Warhol did have a religious side and because these `Clouds’ lift the spirit of visitors,” he said.
Since the work’s original 1966 balloons could not be used, the Warhol Museum granted MOCRA permission to use new ones, though they must be changed every week. More than 1,000 replacements clouds are in storage.
Setting up the exhibit entails more than simply inflating the balloons. “We have been test flying about six clouds since last Saturday, in order to find out how much helium to use in the balloons,” Dempsey said. “The Warhol Museum did send inflation instructions, but depending on the atmospheric pressure and the pressure of the helium container, the length of time to inflate the clouds varies. The basic idea is to get the correct proportion of helium and air so that the balloons hover but do not go directly to the ceiling.”
It will take approximately four hours to inflate all 80 balloons, and they will have to be re-inflated on an almost daily basis. The MOCRA staff has also been experimenting with the placement of the 16 fans throughout the main hall, to create a variety of air currents for the clouds.
“Silver Clouds” was first shown at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City in 1966. It was also used in a dance piece by choreographer Merce Cunningham in 1968. This is the first St. Louis showing and largest ever U.S. installation of the “Clouds.”
The exhibit opens Friday, Nov. 9 with a reception from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at MOCRA, located next to Fusz Hall. The reception is free and open to the public. The exhibit runs Nov. 9 through Dec. 21 and Jan. 8 through Feb. 10. Museum hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free.
