Flowers, butterflies, animals, waves, and topographical contours have been embroidered across the walls, floor, and ceiling of the exhibition hall at low illumination. When you approach and touch the wall on which a deer appears to be walking, the deer slowly disappears with a sound, and the fish swimming in the water moves away if you touch it with your feet. Even though a giant flower taller than a human fills the walls of the exhibition hall, it withers over time to sprout up again. This is the mercurial space of ‘teamLab: LIFE’, an exhibition about the power and cycles of life.
This exhibition is composed of interactive art works by the media art group, teamLab. TeamLab, founded in Japan in 2001, is made up of 400 professionals from around the world and across various disciplines, including artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, and architects. They have featured in a number of exhibitions in New York, London, Paris, Singapore, Beijing, and Tokyo, focusing on the subjects of humans and nature, individuals and the world. Their work asks questions about all kinds of boundaries with which we are familiar, expanding our understanding of art, and trying to transcend the boundaries between the individual and the world, and the boundaries of perception and the continuity of time.
The exhibition hall has been divided into eight areas. Upon entering the entrance of the exhibition hall, one sees the video Life Survives by the Power of Life installed on the wall. The Chinese character meaning ‘life’ manifests as three-dimensions as if it was written in calligraphic characters in the digital space, a working method that teamLab has pursued since its inception. The three-dimensional calligraphic writing becomes a kind of topographical feature in the video, passing through the four seasons, and at the same time, constantly moving between the three-dimensional world and the flat plane. In the next exhibition hall, animals covered with flowers, a moving canyon and the earth all connect. The shapes projected on the walls and floor are not reproduced in advance, but are drawn by a computer programme in real time, and the same scene has not been repeated by detecting the movement of visitors and changing the video in real time.
Moving on to the next exhibition hall, the sea rolls out to the horizon. A scene unfolds in which huge waves swirl along a maze-like corridor. The way waves are treated in media art is similar to the work Starry Beach (covered in SPACE November 2020), which a’strict showed in their recent exhibition ‘a’strict’ at Kukje Gallery. However, while a’strict realizes realistic and synaesthetic impressions of waves, teamLab’s Black Waves: Immersive Mass is here expressed as a pictorial wave that reminds me of Katsushika Hokusai’s prints. Passing through the flower garden and entering the hall on is surrounded by thousands of butterflies in flight, but as this space gets closer, the butterflies crumble and fall, and new butterflies emerge from somewhere else. Finally, the exhibition ends with a work in a galactic-like atmosphere expressing water particles as a continuum.
The exhibition will on show at Dongdaemun Design Plaza until Apr. 4, 2021.
Exhibition views of ‘teamLab: LIFE’ ⓒChoi Eunhwa
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