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  • Writer's pictureJules

Artist Profile: Berndnaut Smilde

Berndnaut is a Dutch artist who creates clouds in spectacular indoor settings. "He creates a wall of water vapor with the type of spritzer you might use on houseplants. A smoke machine then sends a puff of faux fog on a collision course." He has a photographer take photos of the clouds he makes, as they don't last any longer than 6 seconds or so.


cloud in a room
Nimbus Minerva - by Berndnaut Smilde

"I see them as temporary sculptures of almost nothing—the edge of materiality," he says. "It looks like you can dive into them or grab them, but they just fall apart. There’s a duality that I really like where you’re trying to achieve this ideal thing that then collapses just moments later."


I've always found the movement of clouds, their existence, their importance in our daily lives in delivering much needed rain, of great fascination. I think it's wonderful that this artist came up with such an interesting way of exploring clouds and helping us to look at them in a different context.


I also find it interesting how, in this context, it is the artist only and not the photographer that gets attributed to it. At what point does the skill of the photographer taking the photo come into play? Why is this not considered a collaboration? Either way, the results are fantastic.


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