Text by CLOT Magazine
Superblue, is a new artistic endeavour co-founded by current and former PACE gallery directors and CEO Marc Glimcher and Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst. Dedicated to producing, presenting, and engaging the public with experiential art, it will launch its first art centre in Miami in December this year.
This new project was created in response to the rapidly growing public interest in experiential/immersive art and the needs of artists working outside the realm of object-based practices. The new enterprise pioneers an unprecedented model for artists to present their work—and for audiences to engage with it—outside of the traditional frameworks of museums and commercial galleries. Featuring long-term installations, Superblue experiential art centres enable the simultaneous presentation of multiple large-scale and interactive works—offering visitors unparalleled opportunities to be transported to an array of new worlds in just one visit.
Through their work, Superblue artists catalyze engagement with the most pressing issues of our time and provoke new and transformative ways of understanding ourselves and our relationship with the world. Superblue works with artists who are among the pioneers and leading practitioners of experiential art and who reflect a wide range of artistic practices and experiences.
They include some artists well know to our audience: Nick Cave, Mary Corse, Es Devlin, DRIFT, Simon Heijdens, Jeppe Hein, Studio INI, JR, Koo Jeong A, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Kohei Nawa, Carsten Nicolai, Risa Puno, Random International, Michal Rovner, Jacolby Satterwhite, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Studio Swine, teamLab, James Turrell, and Leo Villareal.
Central to Superblue’s model is the introduction of an innovative compensation system for artists that provides them with ongoing royalties from ticket sales for their presentations at Superblue venues. Superblue will launch its first venue in Miami on December 22 with Every Wall Is a Door, showcasing dynamic large-scale installations created by three of the world’s leading experiential artists. The inaugural program features the debut of a new immersive environment by Es Devlin, a transcendent digital experience created by teamLab, and an enveloping light-based Ganzfeld work by James Turrell, all on long-term view at least through 2022.
The artists inaugurating Superblue’s first experiential art centre offer a glimpse into the breadth of the experiential art movement and the extraordinary possibilities for the public to engage with and activate these kinds of works, Superblue Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst shares. Each of these artists provokes us to see our relationship to the world and each other in completely new ways.
From James Turrell’s work with light and space to Es Devlin’s performative and multi-disciplinary practice to teamLab, a collective that has continuously sought to transcend boundaries of perception through innovations in technology. Collectively they reflect the arc of experiential art as a movement and the remarkable ways that artists are innovating with emerging mediums and placing audiences at the centre of their work. We’re looking forward to opening our doors this December and welcoming the public to become a part of the amazing new worlds these artists create.
