New exhibition: “Tomás Saraceno. Celestial Swimmers” at Brainlab headquarters, Munich
The exhibtion "Tomás Saraceno. Celestial Swimmers" at Brainlab headquarters connects art, science and architecture.
Since October 23, 2026, the Brainlab Culture Program presents the exhibition “Celestial Swimmers” by artist Tomás Saraceno at Brainlab headquarters. Open in parallel with the exhibition “Tomás Saraceno in collaboration. Ancestral Futures” at Haus der Kunst Munich, it connects art, science, architecture and ancestral knowledges. From floating spheres and traces of breath, spider webs and salt formations, hand-blown glass, photographs and film, “Celestial Swimmers” moves between microscopic and planetary scales, from the former airfield at Munich-Riem to the salt flats of Salinas Grandes, Salta, in northern Argentina. Across these threads, the exhibition asks how our view changes when air, water and knowledge are not seen as resources but as something we share with others.
The exhibition is open to the public every Friday free of charge by prior registration. Public guided tours will be offered. More information at: brainlab-culture-program.com/en.
New perspectives at the intersection of art and science at Brainlab
The Brainlab headquarters stand on the site of the former Munich-Riem airport, whose historic control tower remains part of this building today. Here, where flight paths were once directed from the ground, two spheres now float above the atrium. Half mirrored, half transparent, they are prototypes for aerosolar flight that Saraceno has developed, extending research initiated by French space agency CNES in the 1970s. Outdoors, at much larger scales, sculptures like these rise as the Sun warms the air within them. At night, their skin holds the heat the Earth releases. Kept afloat by this exchange between Sun and Earth, the planet's own thermodynamics, they drift along the rivers of the wind, free from fossil fuels.
Aerocene, the community and ecosocial movement founded by Saraceno in 2015, follows this principle. It proposes an era of complementarity, one of moving with the atmosphere and its beings rather than against it. Its horizon is an aeronomadic life in floating Cloud Cities, habitats that grow like soap bubbles merging into one another. In the exhibition, their geometries return in clustered cloud modules and drawings made with breath. The Aerocene Float Predictor, developed during the artist’s residency at MIT, translates open meteorological data into possible journeys, projecting where sculptures like these might be carried at different altitudes across coming days.
From synapse to galaxy
Webs, too, float through the exhibition. Saraceno and many arachnologists understand the spider/web as an extension of the spider’s senses and, some argue, of its mind. Essentially blind, the spider builds an image of the world from the vibrations it sends and receives through its threads. Fixed to paper and named after distant nebulae and galaxies, Saraceno’s Spider/Web Maps reveal these gossamer architectures. In a building where the pathways of the human brain are traced and navigated, they recall the connectomes that weave neurons into thought.
El Santuario del Agua
At the exhibition’s conceptual heart is El Santuario del Agua (The Sanctuary of Water), conceived by Saraceno with the eleven Indigenous communities of the Red Atacama network in Salinas Grandes. Developed following the communities’ request and owned and managed entirely by them, this permanent sculpture is being built with salt and water using traditional Andean techniques. It will offer a place to share another cosmovision in which water is not a resource but a living, sacred being, welcoming visitors on the communities’ own terms in defense of the Salar’s fragile water cycles amid expanding lithium extraction.
Members of the press are cordially invited to visit the exhibition. To schedule an appointment or request press images, please contact culture.program@brainlab.com.
Brainlab is exhibition partner of „Tomás Saraceno in collaboration. Ancestral Futures” (17.7.2026–7.2.2027) at Haus der Kunst München.
Brainlab
At Brainlab, we digitize medical workflows, from diagnosis to therapy, to offer clinicians and patients better treatment possibilities. Our innovative digital ecosystem forms the basis for modern healthcare technology in 4000 hospitals in countries. At the forefront of health technology for over 36 years, Munich-based Brainlab employs around 2100 people with expertise across the entire healthcare value chain in 23 locations worldwide.
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Brainlab Culture Program
With the Brainlab Culture Program, the high-tech company also takes on its social responsibility in art and culture—and initiates creative projects with prominent figures and institutions from the art and culture scene. The goal is to foster collaboration, both personal and thematic, among creative practitioners, artistic excellence and innovative institutions in interplay with our company.
Press contact
Brainlab Culture Program
Agnes Trick
Culture Program
+49 89 99 1568 0
culture.program@brainlab.com
Global
Bernadette Erwig
Head of Communication & PR
+49 89 99 1568 0
presse@brainlab.com