ABSTRACT
Does the idea of wonder allow a new understanding of visibility and to what extent does wonder determine our relationship to objects? In order to explore the role of wonder in contemporary artistic practice, this chapter will investigate the image of the cloud in a selection of recent case studies. I am interested in exploring the ways in which the image of clouds and the concept of wonder challenge constructions of knowledge in the twenty-rst century by disrupting assumptions of visibility and transparency. I investigate the artwork’s potential to arrest or immerse the viewer in an illusion in ways that actively question established modes of visibility. Instead of using objects as a means to gain ‘immediate access to ideas and concerns of people’,1 as has been common practice in museums, the idea of wonder suggests rather the illusion of something beyond the object itself. As Greenblatt argues: ‘the knowledge that derives from this kind of looking may not be very useful in the attempt to understand another culture, but it is vitally important in the attempt to understand our own’.2
