If you like your exhibitions big, colourful and immersive, chances are the digital art collective teamLab is already very much on your radar. Their eye-popping shows have been wowing gallery-goers for several years, and in 2019, after only a year open, their permanent museum in Tokyo became the world’s most popular single-artist gallery – topping even Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum.
But if you don’t live in Asia, you may well have only experienced teamLab’s art via Instagram or at the collective’s (massively oversubscribed) temporary exhibitions. For Europeans, that’s about to change: in 2024, teamLab plans to open a permanent art space in the Netherlands.
Housed within Utrecht’s futuristic Wonderwoods green urban development – set to open next to the city’s Centraal station in 2023 – the new ‘Nowhere’ art space promises visitors an ‘awe-inspiring, ever-changing and immersive’ experience.
The Wonderwoods development in Utrecht. Photograph: Vero Digital, courtesy of Wonderwoods and teamLabs
The teamLab space will bring together an array of artworks by some of the collective’s members, as well as an educational ‘Future Park’ area and an ‘Athletic Forest’, which will provide a ‘creative athletic space’ for locals.
As in other permanent exhibitions in Shanghai, Singapore and Taipei, visitors should expect all manner of interactive light sculptures – here set among more than 350 trees and 10,000 shrubs, which are being planted as part of the Wonderwoods development. Could teamLab make Utrecht as much of a tourist magnet as those other cities? Going on their previous smash success, it’s a real possibility.
More brilliant plans:
This power plant in Helsinki is turning into a huge arts complex
Berghain is reopening next month – as an art gallery
Norway is building an epic whale-watching museum in the Arctic Circle