Berndnaut Smilde: Builded Remnants

Smilde combines the heritage of traditional Dutch interior paintings with contemporary media and conceptual techniques. In his Nimbus series, Smilde creates a "real" cloud in interior spaces, depicting a moment of fragility in evocative locations. Smilde creates his clouds by carefully regulating the temperature and humidity of a room and then, using a smoke machine, lighting, and moisture, captures the brief moment when a fleeting "cloud" is created. He carefully selects the locations for their visual as well as historical relevance. Smilde's choice of location often contains visual evidence of the building's purpose, further emphasizing the temporality of both the cloud and its surroundings. Builded Remains explores never before seen "backstage" images of Smilde making the Nimbus artworks and also documents his wider practice and further artistic investigations into nature, science, and the uncanny.