Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 1968 ceiling work is set for its first full presentation in London
A long-unrealized project by Christo and Jeanne-Claude will finally take shape at Gagosian in London this spring. The gallery’s exhibition, Christo: Air, opens May 21 and remains on view through August 21, with Air Package on a Ceiling as its centerpiece.
The work was originally conceived for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, but it was never installed because of technical limitations. According to the gallery, the piece is a vast, internally illuminated, suspended form measuring roughly 32 by 52 feet. Installed overhead, it will hover just above visitors, turning the gallery into a space of soft pressure and visual suspension rather than simple display.
The project carries a particular charge because it was planned in 1968 and remained unrealized during the lifetimes of both artists — Jeanne-Claude died in 2009, and Christo in 2020. Lorenza Giovanelli, who became Christo’s studio manager in 2017, found the original plans in 2018, two years before his death. She later described the work as resembling a beautiful cloud lit from within, and said she had imagined it many times before seeing it installed.
The exhibition will also include rare Christo works, among them Wrapped Automobile—Volvo, Model PV-544 (1981), a wrapped car that has not been shown in 30 years. Together, the works underscore how much of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s practice depended on scale, engineering, and the tension between proposal and realization. In this case, the delay is not a footnote. It is part of the work’s meaning.
