An unrealized work by Christo and Jeanne-Claude that was recently discovered in the Christo’s atelier will be unveiled at Gagosian in London later this month. Entitled Air Package on a Ceiling, the installation consists of a 52-foot-long, 33-foot-wide inflated form wrapped in rope. Softly illuminated from within, the work resembles half of a cloud protruding from the ceiling. The piece will be realized based on the original model from 1968 as well as preparatory drawings and collages. It will be on view at Gagosian’s Mayfair gallery from May 21st through August 21st.
Original plans for the piece were discovered in 2018 by Christo’s studio manager, Lorenza Giovanelli, while clearing space in the artist’s studio. Upon moving a plinth she came across a box that contained the detailed scale model of the work that included electric wiring to demonstrate the piece’s lighting component. “It’s in such great condition because it’s never seen the sunlight. It was not even dusty … It’s been hidden for 50 years,” said Giovanelli in an interview with The Guardian. Air Package on a Ceiling had first been conceived for the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia, though was abandoned due to technical restraints.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, his wife and collaborator, made a series of works in the 1960s that experimented with wrapping air by capturing it within transparent polyethylene packages and rope. These pieces, which pull focus onto the act of wrapping the object rather than on the object itself, gave way to their later installations that wrapped popular monuments like Paris’s Pont Neuf or the Reichstag in Berlin.
A selection of these earlier works from that period will also be on view, alongside Wrapped Automobile–Volvo, Model PV-544 (1981), in which Christo covered an old car belonging to art dealer Serge De Bloe as a means of saving the automobile from destruction.
