Superblue, the long-awaited experiential art center in Miami founded by Pace Gallery CEO Marc Glimcher and former Pace London president Mollie-Dent Brocklehurst, couldn’t have arrived at a more opportune time. The creative cognoscenti was long stuck experiencing art through lackluster virtual viewing rooms and again craving sensory escapades after a year of deprivation. The venue’s phantasmagoric environments by James Turrell, Es Devlin, TeamLab, and Drift were met warmly when the venue opened in May. Now, Superblue will bring a taste of the experience to New York and London starting in the fall.
A large-scale exhibition of five newly commissioned multi-sensory works by Drift, the Amsterdam-based art practice helmed by Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, will open in The Shed at Hudson Yards in September. Called “Fragile Future,” it offers up utopian visions for the fraught future of the planet. Works range from kinetic sculptures controlled by choreographed wind machines to multi-channel projected films that follow floating concrete blocks set within “dystopian” New York settings. On certain dates, the series will transform into a giant immersive performance within The McCourt, a soaring performance hall nested within the venue’s retractable shell.
In October, Superblue will temporarily take over Pace’s current Mayfair space as the gallery plots a move to nearby Hanover Square. On the roster is a multi-sensory experience called Silent Fall by Studio Swine, the experimental collective by Japanese architect Azusa Murakami and British artist Alexander Groves, that will feature trees emitting mist bubbles. It won’t be a full-blown Superblue experience given the gallery’s spatial limitations, but expect “a really beautiful immersive moment” that engages smell and touch. “There’s an urgency for people to experience things in the real world again,” Dent-Brocklehurst tells the Art Newspaper. “These exhibitions are a way for people to re-engage with their friends, with society, with people in a way that’s open and interesting and exciting.”
