You won’t find any clowns at the Los Angeles leg of the traveling balloon museum, but there are plenty of other carnival-inspired sights and sounds to experience: huge inflated tents, queues marked by bright primary colors and fitting concessions halfway. .
The award-winning Museum of Contemporary Art unveiled its “Let’s Fly” show last week for a limited run at Ace Mission Studios in the Arts District, previously home to the award-winning Museum of Contemporary Art. fantasy amusement park Luna Luna.
Founded in Rome in 2020, the museum has welcomed more than 4.4 million visitors during its tours to cities around the world, including Paris, Milan, Madrid, London, New York, Atlanta and Miami, among others. Each iteration is informed by the culture of the city that hosts it, with only central air as its medium.
Halfway between the sensory explosion of Meow Wolf and the labyrinthine nature of an IKEA store, the experience features installations by 21 artists with avant-garde interpretations of inflatable art and balloons. On display until March 16, the exhibition is highly immersive and highly Instagrammable. Here are six things to know before your visit.
1. The experience begins before you even enter the building
The Sixth Street Viaduct stands in the background of artist Camila Falsini’s outdoor exhibit “DREAMS.”
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
The museum opens with a walk through the gardens – specifically Camila Falsini’s “DREAMS,” a series of oversized inflatable shapes, symbols and igloos intended to evoke a dreamlike city inspired by pop art and the Memphis group.
The works, created especially for the “Let’s Fly” exhibition in Los Angeles, are striped, spotted, donut-shaped and light up in the night sky like condensed, dirigible versions of the “Seven Magic Mountains” sculpture by Ugo Rondinone.
Just inside, Max Streicher’s “Quadriga” features enormous, bloated horses reminiscent of wingless Pegasi in the way they gallop through the air. And the amenities continue to the gift shop, located between a series of photo backdrops and a food court offering concessions like popcorn and cotton candy.
2. The strongest common thread between the works is not the balloons but the air
Maristella Burchietti is immersed in the exhibition “AI Data Portal of Los Angeles” by the Ouchhh collective.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
We may not immediately make the connection between data and air, but the Ouchhh collective’s “AI Data Portal of Los Angeles”, an immersive tunnel of LED screens broadcasting an abstract amalgam of Excel spreadsheets, documents, graphics and other digital ephemera, reinvents the city’s cloud. data in the form of thousands of tiny colored beads. The dizzying room is reminiscent of Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirror Rooms” at the Broad, but more like something out of the quantum universe of Ant-Man.
Another exhibit, the museum’s newest work, “Mariposa” by Oakland-based LED artist Christopher Schardt, features an enormous flapping butterfly powered by a rotating bench and lit by more than 39,000 full-color LEDs. The most airy and airy element of this room are the soft poufs, on which guests are encouraged to lie down and relax.
3. You will want to relive your childhood by diving into the huge ball pool
The “Hyperstellar” exhibition, created by Hyperstudio, Quiet Ensemble and Roman Hill, is one of several interactive art spaces.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
There are many notable and memorable exhibits in the museum, but perhaps the piece de resistance is the massive Olympic-sized swimming pool ball pit which hosts intermittent light shows in which additional balls and spotlights descend from the already bulbous ceiling. If Matthew McConaughey’s “Interstellar” astronaut stumbled upon a planet dominated by palm-sized black balls, it might look like this.
In fact, “Hyperstellar,” from Hyperstudio featuring Quiet Ensemble and Roman Hill, is meant to evoke thoughts of the cosmos, with the surrounding walls shrouded in LED screens broadcasting 360-degree views of water droplets and bubbles. explosive air.
4. If you are sensitive to light, beware of Ginjos
The exhibition “The Ginjos” by Rub Kandy is one of the most intense spaces in the museum.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Although there are many rooms inside the museum that appeal to the senses of touch, hearing, and sight (including a dimly lit bubble room with wet, spongy floors), visitors to Risk of seizures should avoid “The Ginjos,” an installation filled with strange inflatable creatures that resemble Minions on acid.
Even the museum’s description, which describes Rub Kandy’s creations as “huge eyes that see everything,” is slightly creepy. Add pulsing strobe lights and floppy, oversized, mouthless cyclops and you have all the makings of a nightmarish journey. Speaking of travel…
5. Consider visiting the buzzed museum
Another “Let’s Fly” exclusive, ENESS’ “Spiritus Sonata” features hallucinogenic elephant-balloon hybrids that are straight out of the psychedelic “Heffalumps and Woozles” scene from Winnie the Pooh. Imagine mastodon-like creatures whose noses are wind instruments that inflate structures and emit sound.
Although makeshift wine bars were set up intermittently throughout the space during the media preview, it is unclear whether the museum will provide provisions to the general public. But guests who participate before arriving will definitely have a heightened experience in the trippy rooms.
6. Wear something Instagrammable: There’s a selfie session on the way out!
Maristella Burchietti stands in one of the museum’s selfie spots.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
No modern museum is complete without plenty of social media-ready photo opportunities, and the Balloon Museum saves the best for last.
In the museum’s final hallway – just past a VR headset experience and before the gift shop and food court – are eight jewel-toned booths staged with props for the perfect, ornately decorated Instagram post minimal but brightly colored.
Choose from a huge headless gummy bear, a phone booth filled with balloons, a cloudscape, Los Angeles-ready angel wings, and more poppy backgrounds for a one-of-a-kind photo experience. Because if it’s not posted on Instagram, did you even go there?
