Japan's teamLab makes Midwest debut at Chicago's Smart Museum of Art
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"Sea of Darkness, Memory Shining From the Depths." Photo: Carrie Shepherd/Axios
Japanese art collective teamLab makes its Midwest debut at Chicago's Smart Museum of Art.
The (very) big picture: teamLab presents large-scale digital works that collide with color and movement and interact directly with their surroundings.
If you go: "teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity" runs through Feb. 21 at the University of Chicago museum.
State of play: Twenty-five years after Toshiyuki Inoko started teamLab, the group now includes hundreds of artists, scientists, computer programmers, mathematicians and architects, among others.
Zoom in: Many of the works speak to the environment where they're on display. "Continuous Life and Death at the Now of Eternity II" follows the life cycle of flowers, from bud to bloom to wilt, all against a backdrop that changes color with the sunrise and sunset outside the museum.
- Two new works for the Smart, "Sea of Darkness, Memory Shining from the Depths" and "Sea," feature copper squares, each uniquely designed, as a sort of three-dimensional backdrop that changes colors based on the reflections.
The intrigue: After weaving through the multi-gallery experience, one of the final works, "The World of Irreversible Change," most resembles a detailed painting of an ancient Japanese village.
- When a person touches the work, war breaks out on the screen, fire engulfing the village and its people, leaving it burned and destroyed.
- The landscape returns, but humanity does not.
Fair warning: In this show, you aren't allowed to touch the screen.