teamLab installation. Photo: Pace Gallery.
Silicon Valley finally has its first art gallery, and it comes by a name you probably recognize, at least in part: Pace Art and Technology. The 20,000-square-foot space by the internationally renowned Pace Gallery is dedicated solely to showcasing contemporary digital artworks, a fitting mission for America’s most tech-savvy town.
The gallery comes thanks to local collector Laura Arrillaga Andreessen, who purchased so much art from Pace she actually inspired director Marc Glimcher to start making house calls.
“In the beginning, Laura Arrillaga wouldn’t travel, so I would bring art to her house, and then her friends started wanting me to bring them art too. And she said, you know, it’s a little tacky to be doing this in my house, why don’t you use my dad’s old run down Tesla shop?,” Glimcher told the Guardian.
It appears Glimcher has figured out what it takes to get the tech crowd interested in art: telling them they can’t have it. The inaugural exhibition at Pace Art and Technology features an immersive installation by teamLab in which nothing is for sale. In fact, viewers actually have to pay $20 admission to view the multi-room light installation.
Photo: Pace Gallery.
“I didn’t come and say I’m going to make Silicon Valley like art. It just happened,” Glimcher said, noting that “there’s a certain standoffishness to art here.”
The exhibition, “Living Digital Space and Future Parks,” had a formidable crowd on opening night which included Arrillaga Andreessen and her husband, as well as Silicon Valley royalty like Laurene Powell Jobs.
teamLab, a Japanese art collective formed in 2001, identifies as “an interdisciplinary group of ultra-technologists” who navigate the fine line between art, tech, design, and the natural world, drawing inspiration from sources such as ancient Japanese art and anime. Many of the digital light environments in the Pace show are being exhibited for the first time in North America.
The Wall Street Journal reports that less than a week after the high-profile opening, at least three of the supposedly not-for-sale works have in fact sold, and several others by the art collective that were not on display have been purchased for prices as high as $450,000.
Photo: Pace Gallery.
Pace Art and Technology and teamLab present “Living Digital Space and Future Parks” will be on display until July 1, 2016.