Award-winning Contemporary Art Exhibition Balloon Museum Lands in Los Angeles
Globe-Trotting Immersive Installation “Let’s Fly” Arrives for Limited Run at Ace Mission Studios,
The Balloon Museum’s acclaimed exhibition “Let’s Fly” is set to open in Los Angeles at Ace Mission Studios on October 30, 2024. This immersive installation has previously captivated audiences in major cities worldwide, including Rome, Paris, and New York.
Featuring works from 21 artists, including notable names like Filthy Luker and Tadao Cern, the exhibition invites visitors to engage with contemporary art that emphasizes touch and interaction. A highlight is the debut of “Mariposa,” an LED installation by Christopher Schardt, which showcases over 39,000 full-color LEDs and was first unveiled at Burning Man in 2023. The Balloon Museum has attracted more than 4.4 million visitors since its inception in 2021 and has earned accolades for its creative presentations.
“Let’s Fly seeks to surprise and delight viewers with an otherworldly experience they won’t receive anywhere else,” said Roberto Fantauzzi, president of Lux Holding. “The creative enclave of the ArtsDistrict was a natural fit for our next destination, and we are thrilled to join this vibrant community and welcome Los Angeles visitors and residents to Balloon Museum.” Set at Ace Mission Studios, Balloon Museum features installations by 21 artists including Filthy Luker, Tadao Cern, MyeongBeom Kim, Ouchhh, SpY, Max Streicher, Karina Smigla – Bobinski, Michael Shaw, ENESS, Roman Hill, Quiet Ensemble, Rub Kandy, Cyril Lancelin, Sila Sveta, Camilla Falsini, MOTOREFISICO, Alex Schweder, Hyperstudio, Mauro Pace, and Sasha Frolova. It also marks the debut of Balloon Museum’s newest work, Mariposa. Designed by Oakland, CA-based LED artist Christopher Schardt, Mariposa debuted at Burning Man in 2023 and is illuminated with over 39,000 full-color LEDs. Schardt’s previous works have been displayed at The Smithsonian Institution, Hudson Yards and Dubai’s 2020 World’s Fair. Through exclusive agreements with leading artists, Balloon Museum has secured works by the foremost artists specializing in Inflatable and Balloon Art. Each edition of Balloon Museum is wholly different, influenced by the city’s artistic community and culture, but connected through the shared central medium of air. Viewers are placed squarely at the center of the experience as artists investigate the opposition between heaviness, darkness and gravity, juxtaposed against the light, weightlessness, and hovering evoked in the art pieces. Since its globe-trotting journey kicked off in 2021 in Rome, over 4.4 million people have experienced.
Max Streicher – Quadriga – Year of Creation: 2007 Horses embody a kind of grace and power that humans can only envy. Depicted in art, they have long represented our reaching for the transcendent. Streicher’s work with the horse image emerged out of an interest in expressions of the metaphysical as seen in the work of Giorgio de Chirico or Salvador Dali, both of whom depicted horses and both with reference to classical sculpture. For all their monumental presence Streicher’s works are but delicate skins filled with air and thus are more like fleeting metaphysical phantoms.
Ouchhh – AI Dataportal of Los Angeles – Year of creation: 2023 AI Data Portal is an immersive tunnel composed of LED screens and mirrors that reflect the diffused lights and forms. Thousands of tiny coloured beads propagate through the tunnel. The result is a magnetic movement that’s hard to tear your eyes away from. With this installation, Ouchhh collective uses millions of pieces of data from Los Angeles digital environment, and specifically, the city’s air data. Excel spreadsheets and illegible graphs disappear in favor of abstract, hypnotizing forms. The collective’s practice is called data art, which involves the creation of works generated from data about the air of the city of Miami such as statistics, flows, inventories, etc. The information in all its dimensions, which we don’t see and most often don’t understand, is metamorphosed into images with a tangible aesthetic, capable of generating emotions for the visitor
SpY – ZEROS – Year of Creation: 2023 ZEROS is an inflatable kinetic sculpture, a work in motion. The minimalist installation is made up of 10 black inflatable circles. Voluminous, the rings move in a slow, undulating choreography. The contrast between the white light of the room and the intense, matte black of the rings captivates the viewer’s eye as if hypnotized by this strange mechanical ballet. The solemn movements of the piece evoke the image of an enormous animal that shifts ponderously, in a visual and spatial experience dominated by the intense contrast of the black shapes against the hard white light. The movements animate and give life to this plastic animal, creating a unique visual and spatial experience. ZEROS is in the vein of the Op art and kinetic creations of the 1960s, a geometric abstract art movement using optical illusion.
Cyril Lancelin – Flying Maze – Year of Creation: 2023 After initial fruitful collaborations with the Balloon Museum, Cyril Lancelin created Flying Maze, a new artwork specially made for the Let’s Fly exhibition. The sculpture takes the form of an immense inflatable maze. With its green colour, the sculpture is a reminder of vegetal labyrinths, popular creations during the European Renaissance. The labyrinth is a very old motif and a symbol of the quest for self and the elevation of the spirit towards knowledge. Cyril Lancelin invites visitors to explore the mazes of this original work-architecture. Illuminated in places, visitors can venture inside to get lost or hide. At the heart of the labyrinth, there is no Minotaur, as in Greek mythology, but a gigantic reflecting sphere. A way for the artist to inscribe the visitors and their own image into his artwork.
Hyperstudio with Quiet Ensemble and Roman Hill – Hyperstellar – Year of Creation: 2023 Hyperstellar is a sensory journey that challenges the perception of our place in the universe, leading the audience to experience the infinite size and complexity of the cosmos. The installation is conceived as a total immersion in a mysterious universe, represented by a pool of black balls and a ceiling composed of a sky of balloons of the same color. This environment creates a perfect contrast for the cosmic wonders that will be revealed on the circular LED screen placed at 360 degrees, which dominates the room. Here, the magic begins to unfold. The hypnotic abstract shapes before our eyes, made by French artist Romain Hill, are actually high-resolution shots of exploding water droplets and air bubbles. The inversion of perspective is astonishing: the grandeur of the cosmos is not only out there in space, but is also present near us all, inside a drop of water and within a bubble of air. The audience finds itself an integral part of a totalizing system, in which microscopic elements become carriers of magnified mysteries. Each element, rendered unrecognizable by its exaggerated size, emphasizes that the beauty of the universe is present even in the smallest and often overlooked details. The kinetic lights synchronize with the sounds that accompany the images, creating a synesthetic and immersive experience. The audience, immersed in this multimedia and multisensory spectacle, finds itself catapulted into a journey where the dimensions of reality expand and contract in a hypnotic dance of light, sounds and forms. Hyperstellar invites viewers to reflect on their own place in the universe, suggesting that in order to perceive cosmic immensity, it is not necessary to travel through space, but just to look closely at our surroundings. In this collective experience, we realize that although microscopic, we are all part of a vast and extraordinary universe.
Quiet Ensemble – A Quiet Storm – Year of creation: 2022 Once plunged into darkness, visitors are surprised to discover dozens of soap bubbles floating in the space. All the bubbles are filled with thick white smoke, transforming them into opaque, hovering objects. Steamy projections dress up the space, transporting us into the magical world of Italian duo Quiet Ensemble. Always with the same desire to combine organic and artificial elements, the artists blur our landmarks and titillate our senses to create a feeling of enchantment. Generated by smoke machines, the bubbles move to the aerial rhythm of a sound creation composed by the artists themselves.
Rub Kandy – The GINJOS – Year of creation: 2023 The GINJOS are strange inflatable creatures with huge eyes that see everything. After debuting at the Pop Air exhibition, they appeared again at the Let’s Fly and EmotionAir exhibitions at the Balloon Museum. Originating from the jungles along the Panama-Colombia border, some of them even glow in the dark. With humor and derision, artist Rub Kandy tells us the story of this zany tribe. Irreverent, affectionate, and filled with contradictions, the GINJOS are predominantly silent: lacking mouths, they still manage to convey a smile through their form and colors. Their large eyes carefully scrutinize our every movement, creating the impression that they await us in their realm and are ready to embrace interaction with the audience. From tender embraces to playful tugs, the GINJOS will be a constant presence, magically coming to life to enrich the exhibition experience.
MyeongBeom Kim – Balloon Tree – Year of creation: 2009 This artwork floats above the audience with a crown of red balloons clustered around the branches of a young tree with visible roots. The seemingly bizarre and illogical association of objects is a way of melding practical juxtaposition and combination of natural and man-made elements in time and space, erasing stereotypes connected to the objects and drawing out the expansion of subjective cognition. This approach draws out subjective appreciation and perception, and becomes the source of new stories and energy for new diverse possibilities that open up while looking at an object or event. To understand the essence of authenticity, the artist believes that a process of acquiring experience is necessary and should not be random or blind to the a priori ideas of others. Rather than superficial issues and trendy methods of expression, the artist strives to maintain the authenticity of the work by recognizing, reflecting, and expressing objects through deeply rooted experiences and perspectives.
Tadao Cern – BB – Year of creation: 2023 Sometimes two, sometimes many more, the BB series comes in a variety of formats. Here, 180 silver balloons displayed in rows criss-cross the space with symmetrical, drawn lines. In this room of mirrors and stroboscopic lighting effects, the many reflections obscure our bearings. The boundaries between installation and space become blurred. Our compass goes astray. There’s no more up, no more down. By dint of persistence, the viewer gradually discovers the illusion. Tadao Cern’s work is reminiscent of the obsessions of the minimalist artists of the 1960s and ‘70s, such as repetition, the use of monochrome colors, and symmetry. Here, however, he makes a surprising shift by incorporating a soundtrack of nature sounds into his installation. The contrast between the visual and the aural reinforces our sense of disorientation.
ENESS – Spiritus Sonata – Year of creation: 2023 Always committed to creating interactive artworks that engage the senses and strengthen ties with their public, ENESS created an original work entitled Spiritus Sonata for the Let’s Fly exhibition. “Spiritus” can be translated as “breath” or “vital breath,” and “Sonata” as “musical composition”. This inflatable and luminous creation invites the visitor to feel uplifted and connected. Evoking the magical, cottony ambience of early childhood discoveries, Spiritus Sonata envelops us, provoking surprise and tenderness. With its recognizable Kawaii or “cute” aesthetic, these veritable wind instruments use air to inflate the structures, enabling sounds to be created from the nasal extensions of each character. The layers of sound overlap, surrounding visitors in a celestial, vibratory continuum.
MOTOREFISICO – Swing – Year of creation: 2023 From the conceptualization of the physical system of the conical pendulum, MOTOREFISICO presents their work Swing on the occasion of the Let’s Fly exhibition. This installation, composed of a series of spheres suspended from the ceiling, comes to life through engaging interaction with the audience. The spheres move in space, bouncing and spinning vortex-like, creating a dynamic and captivating play environment. The spectator is an integral part of the artwork, encouraged to move freely in the surrounding space, causing the spheres to oscillate, potentially colliding with others in motion. This interactive experience not only stimulates the imagination and creativity of the audience but also evokes the profound concept of trust. Through the selected materials and the very nature of the oscillatory movement, Swing recalls the idea of trust and surrender, suggesting the sensation of letting go into the arms of a reliable person. The connection between the visitor and the artwork becomes a moment of mutual trust, where active participation translates into a collective dance of spheres capturing the essence of the human experience. In this context, Swing is not just an installation but an interactive platform that explores the delicate balance between trust, movement, and the joyful unpredictability of human interaction.
Alex Schweder – Aeroton – Year of creation: 2023 Merging the Greek words for air, aero, and sound, ton, Aeroton continues Schweder’s use of inflatables to make spaces that are also sound instruments. Conceived of as a time-based labyrinth, ways through this space open and close as fabric columns lift and fall. Working with German composer Norbert Wuertz, the electromagnetic fields of the electric fans causing this to happen are digitized into a sonic layer using a custom built synthesizer. Faux fur entices occupants fingers to touch, caress, and lay upon surfaces that lift and lower their bodies slowly as they wait for passageways to open.
Christopher Schardt – Mariposa – Year of Creation: 2023
Mariposa is a 26-foot-wide butterfly sculpture with over 39,000 full-color LEDs. The wings are made of aluminum, and the body is made from delicate, wooden hoops. The eyes are plasma globes. The butterfly hangs from an 18-foot-tall tower with a wide porch swing. The LEDs display vivid, animated patterns choreographed to music, while visitors cause the wings to flap by swinging on the swing. This engagement makes Mariposa a uniquely immersive and interactive experience. Built for Burning Man 2023, the installation has been exhibited at many venues including Love Burn, UnScruz, and the 2024 Charlotte International Art Festival.
Sasha Frolova – Fountain of Eternity & Kaleidoscope – Year of Creation: 2022 Artist and performer Sasha Frolova presents Fountain of Eternity, an inflatable transparent and silver sculpture, and a video work entitled Kaleidoscope. In this video, projected onto a ceiling-mounted circular screen, the artist appears dressed in colorful, inflatable latex costumes. We see smooth, plastic silhouettes with a burlesque allure, dancing rhythmically to the sound of soothing music. The artist creates a kaleidoscopic, hypnotizing self-portrait with a taste for pop and baroque aesthetics. Adorned with a silver coating, Fountain of Eternity is a veritable alchemical symbol that resonates with our subconscious and inspiring dreams and fantasies. A sculpture on a human scale, the pistil-like fountain confirms the essence of a drink sipped from a sweet, bewitching nectar.
Karina Smigla-Bobinski – ADA – Year of creation: 2011 Named in honor of the eponymous 19th-century English mathematician Ada Lovelace, famous for having created the first true computer program and envisioning a machine capable of generating works of art, ADA is a self-generating work of art. Inflated with helium, it bristles with charcoal sticks. This PVC sphere floats freely in space and it is in this weightlessness that ADA leaves its mark. Activated by the gestures of visitors, the sphere moves, rolls on itself, ending up on the floors and white walls of the rectangular room. Like a sheet of paper, the walls are completely scribbled over. No matter how hard visitors try to control it, they soon realize that ADA is an independent artist. Her movement expresses itself visually and, like a computer, produces unpredictable results. A unique, evolving interactive installation that grows with its audience.
Hyperstudio • Mauro Pace – Perpetual Ballet – Year of Creation: 2024 The Perpetual Ballet embodies the essence of air and movement, designed to be the centerpiece of an immersive, interactive space. At the core is the circular, helical shape that mimics the form of a tornado; a sculptural vortex engineered to create an organic chaos of particles in motion. Visitors find themselves at the center of the serene yet powerful force of the whirlwind as the installation plays with the dichotomy of white noise and silence, transitioning between moments of visual and auditory stimulation and the all encompassing nature of ascending air. Balloons of varying sizes rise and fall in cyclic choreographed movements within a crafted airstream, while the compression and expansion of the space animate the spheres in a mesmerizing dance. The ambiance of the installation, curated to resonate with the theme of cyclical and ephemeral nature, embodies the ever-present yet unseen eye of the cyclone, aiming to transform our perception of air from an invisible necessity into a visible spectacle. The installation invites the audience to ponder the unseen forces that shape our world while standing in a Perpetual Ballet.
Sila Sveta – Airscape – Year of creation: 2023 The Sila Sveta collective immerses us in captivating inflatable worlds. Wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset, we are projected into a long tracking shot, as if through a video game. The artists transport us from world to world to discover bubbles, balloons, castles, grandiose palaces, roller coasters, and unexpected underwater creatures. By alternating scales, from the infinitely large to the infinitely small, the artists produce the sensation of an unlimited universe, where anything seems possible. This video evokes anecdotes and references, notably, to what appears to be the Colosseum, an immense amphitheater in the heart of Rome. A fitting reference, given that the Balloon Museum’s creators are based in Rome, Italy. With this dynamic sequence shot, viewers are plunged into a breathtaking visual journey, a unique immersive experience designed especially for the Balloon Museum.
Michael Shaw – Lava Lamp – Year of creation: 2023 For the Let’s Fly exhibition, Michael Shaw created an architecturally bespoke response: Lava Lamp, a monumental, inflatable and colorful sculpture. With this title, the artist refers to the lamp invented in 1963, a vertical glass globe containing a transparent liquid in which colored balls of melted wax circulate. Michael Shaw’s sculpture is inspired by the colors, shapes, and movement of the lamp, which became a Pop reference in the 1990s. Like a sleeping creature, the inflatable gives the strange impression of breathing in and out. Indeed, its fans are constantly activated, blowing air cyclically into the structure. Measuring more than 44m in length, the artwork wraps itself around the space, overflowing at both ends. This psychedelic snake is composed of repeating violet, lilac, and pink stripes. A pattern of colors that accentuates its curvilinear course around the building. Thanks to its immensity and extravagance, Michael Shaw’s sculpture is a striking installation to behold.
We took my friends little girl to experience the balloon exhibit.
Bella quote
I loved the exhibition because the colors were so pretty! It made me feel happy and my favorite part was being with my mummy. My favorite part of the balloons was the swimming pool with the tiny balls.
