Digital art group teamLab to open museum in Shanghai

Digital art group teamLab is opening its first art museum in Shanghai at the former World Expo 2010 site in downtown Huangpu District in November.

Source: borderless.team-lab

The teamLab Borderless Shanghai, with an exhibition space of 6,600 square meters, will display about 50 digital artworks at the Huangpu River waterfront venue. Some of the exhibitions will be making their world debut in the city.

The art group founded in Japan in 2001 is composed of artists, programmers, engineers, animators, mathematicians and architects. They aim to explore "continuity among people," as well as "a new relationship that transcends the boundaries between people and the world."

Their first art museum opened in Tokyo in 2018. The Mori Building Digital Art Museum replaced the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to become the world's most popular art museum with a single artist's exhibition with 2.3 million annual visitors.

The art group sparked excitement at TANK Shanghai in the West Bund in Xuhui District early this year with an immersive digital exhibition. Long lines of people were seen waiting outside the renovated former aviation fuel tanks site during the six-month exhibition.

At the new museum beside the landmark Power Station of Art, hundreds high definition projectors will create different worlds of forest, flowers, streams as well as time and space.

The museum initially released two centerpiece exhibitions on Wednesday as a previewfor its grand opening on November 5.

"The Universe of Water Particles on a Rock where People Gather" features waterfalls, flowers and birds that will interact with visitors when they walk close by. Creeks, for instance, will detour and flow around visitors' feet. Flowers will bloom and wither within a minute when people touch them.

Waterfalls projected onto the walls inside are accompanied by soothing music, lending a special Zen touch and immersive feel.

The "Forest of Resonating Lamps — One Stroke" showcase tens of thousands of hanging lanterns which will be illuminated when visitors enter the exhibition hall.

Other centerpiece attractions will be released ahead of the official opening.

TeamLab aims to explore relationships between people and nature as well as people and the world. Digital technologies can release the art from the physical world and transcend borders, according to the museum.