With permanent spaces in major cities across Japan including Tokyo and Osaka, it’s about time teamLab opened one in Kyoto. So, good news: the world-famous art collective is finally launching a permanent museum right in the heart of the ancient capital come autumn.
Called teamLab Biovortex Kyoto, this immersive art space is part of a new creative hub within the Kyoto Station Southeast Area Project. While details are still scarce, we do know the museum will showcase all-new artworks including some never before seen in Japan. The pieces are made of materials you wouldn’t normally expect in conventional art, and in typical teamLab fashion, you can literally step into the installations.
Here are four artworks teamLab recently revealed for the new museum.
Massless Amorphous Sculpture
At first glance, this piece looks like a floating mass of soap bubbles. It’s certainly no typical sculpture, being neither solid nor gaseous. According to teamLab, this ‘Higher Order Sculpture’ is made of ‘energy, movement and balance’.
It interacts with the people around it: it can wrap around a viewer and even reconfigure itself if it gets pulled apart. Despite looking delicate, it holds its shape surprisingly well, as long as the environment is right.
Massless Suns and Dark Suns
This endless field of glowing light spheres is what teamLab calls a ‘Cognitive Sculpture’; an artwork that explores how we perceive the world around us.
When you touch one of the spheres, it lights up, and nearby spheres respond in a ripple effect. But there’s no solid object here – just light. The sculpture doesn’t really exist in the physical sense. It’s a product of your perception, and this just shows how our minds shape what we perceive.
Morphing Continuum
Another of teamLab’s ‘High Order Sculptures’, ‘Morphing Continuum’ is made up of floating, glowing spheres that move and shift like a living organism. teamLab calls this a ‘biocosmos’, a ‘living’ system that depends on invisible forces like air flow, light and energy. People can walk through it, and even if its form gets disturbed, it naturally reshapes itself.
Traces of Life
‘Traces of Life’ is an interactive installation that exists only because of its viewers. Without people, it’s just a dark space. When someone walks through it, their footsteps leave glowing trails that linger long enough to connect with others, creating a large, living pattern in the space.
For more information, check teamLab Biovortex Kyoto’s website.
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