Bubbling 'Cloud Canyons' Come to New York

In David Medalla's Cloud Canyons, bubbles rise together through towering columns of wood and formica, spilling out into the open and surrendering themselves to the forces of gravity and air. The art morphs before the viewer’s eyes, each moment granting the audience a fleeting, kinetic snapshot as it evaporates seamlessly into the next. The work, on display until November 15th as part of Venus Over Manhattan’s participation in the Independent New York art fair, has been reincarnated numerous times since completion of a first iteration in 1963—"The Bubble Machine cannot be finished; there is no finite form it can take and no limit to the times it can be recreated," the press release states.

Early memories of Manila Bay sunsets and cooking with coconut milk served as the initial inspiration for the celebrated Filipino artist, who also drew from a trip to an Edinburgh brewery when creating the original bubble machine. The Cloud Canyons series has since been lauded as the first "auto-creative" sculpture drawing praise from the likes of Marcel Duchamp who created a work of art in honor of Medalla.

“The most important thing I think is to give life to materials, so that instead of finding ourselves separate from them we find a complete dialogue with the material,” states the artist.

Take a look at the evolution of Cloud Canyons below and view it in person at Independent New York until November 15th.

Venus Over Manhattan’s presentation of David Medalla’s Cloud Canyons opened this past weekend at the Independent New York art fair, and will be on display through November 15.

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