Projection mapping is certainly on trend right now, and looking at Transcending Boundaries, a new exhibition that is currently in residence at London’s Pace Gallery, it’s not hard to see why.

Yesterday I was invited to probably the most beautiful experience, I have had for a long timePace Gallery was teaming with WWF to raise awareness on climate change and the event certainly was an eye-opener!

If you don’t know what projection mapping is, just watch this video for the most achingly beautiful demonstration. The science behind it is quite simple – by the use of powerful projectors an image is displayed on a surface, that you can then make interactive using interactive sensors. (Furthermore I have uploaded videos of me at the exhibition on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook,  if you are more curious!)

Pace Gallery is a leading contemporary art gallery representing many of the most significant international artists and estates of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Pace has nine locations worldwide: three galleries in New York; one in London; one in Palo Alto, California; one in Beijing; and spaces in Hong Kong, Paris and Menlo Park, California. Transcending Boundaries is an exhibition of works by teamLab featuring three rooms of immersive installations, two of which have never been seen before. 

Transcending Boundaries explores the role of digital technology in transcending the physical and conceptual boundaries that exist between different artworks, with imagery from one work breaking free of the frame and entering the space of another. The installations also dissolve distinctions between artwork and exhibition space, and involve the viewer through interactivity 

The largest room in the exhibition include six works and feature Universe of Water Particles: virtual waterfall that extends beyond the gallery wall onto the floor, flowing through the exhibition space and around the feet of the viewer.

Pace has represented teamLab since 2015. Toshiyuki Inoko, teamLabs’s founder, says, “We are honoured to share some of our most recently created artworks and hope the universality of their themes—creativity, play, exploration, immersion, life, and fluidity—will seep into the broader conscience.”

Surrounded by butterflies and flowers… Words can not express how beautiful this was. (Here I am taking pictures of my feet. For every step you take the flowers and butterflies will follow you!)

Here I am in the second room! Dark Waves (2016) is a simulation of the movement of waves based on the behaviour of hundreds of thousands of water particles. To create this piece, teamLab calculated the interactions of hundreds of thousands of particles; in visualising the waves, the behaviour of the particles on the water was then extracted and lines were drawn in relation to their movement. The mind boggles at its construction, but the finished work is a feast for the eyes. (I really wish it was possible to upload videos here! Because the experience is simply incredible!)

In the last room a completely dark place is transformed by the presence of the viewer, which activates Flowers Bloom on People (2017). With the body as a canvas for the projections, flowers are in a process of continuous change—growing, decaying and scattering in direct response to the viewer’s movements. (At first I didn’t get it – everything was black! Until I was covered in a white sheet and suddenly I looked like this!)

I could have stayed in this room forever! The works here are truly absorbing and meditative. Again it is not easy to capture the experience on camera! And you are not allowed to use flash – but as mentioned before, this is a must-see, so you really have to get your tickets before they are sold out!

The event also included drinks, Yay! Daniel from Martin Miller’s Gin made me a really great one to enjoy while having a chat with Nicolas from Page Gallery and Lucy and Flora from WWF

Oh yes please! That’s how to serve a gin and tonic!

Nice atmosphere and lovely people! I was really happy to have been invited! I also had a really good chat with Lucy Sargent from WWF, who told me why WWF were interested in this exhibition. She said “This is simply a beautiful exhibition. But imagine if there is no nature in the future. Then this will be the closest you will ever get to nature if we don’t do anything about it” I really hope I will have the opportunity to work with WWF in the future!

I would like to thank Nicolas from Pace Gallery and Lucy and Flora for inviting me. (Even though this was an invitation, all views are my own) – and I can only say “you really, really have to go!”

The exhibition will be on view from 25 January to 11 March 2017 at 6 Burlington Gardens.

X Louise