teamLab

On view from May 10 to August 16, the show will spotlight a single interactive digital artwork—titled The World of Irreversible Change—projected on a wall in the gallery. This presentation marks teamLab’s first solo exhibition in New York in ten years.

Founded by Toshiyuki Inoko in Tokyo in 2001, teamLab is an international collective of artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, and architects. Known for its multisensory, immersive work, teamLab explores the relationships between humans and the world, encouraging new modes of perception through its pioneering, technologically advanced installations. In recent years, teamLab has presented solo exhibitions at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco; Amos Rex in Helsinki; TANK Shanghai; and many other institutions and venues around the world.

Over the course of its exhibition at Pace, The World of Irreversible Change can transform as a result of viewers’ engagement with it. If visitors continue to intervene with the work during its three-month presentation, the scenes of daily life will become increasingly agitated and chaotic, with fighting between individuals escalating into an all-out war. Peace and harmony will give way to fire and destruction, a devolution that speaks to the inherency and universality of violence in the human experience. The city will become forever devoid of people, while plants will begin populating its streets and ruins over time.

“In the ruined city where not a single person remains, the seasons still pass and the sun rises and sets with the time of the real world,” teamLab writes in a statement on The World of Irreversible Change. “After a while, new flora begin to grow in the burnt ruins of the city. The flora grow, bloom, and scatter repeatedly, changing daily with the real passage of time ... Once the world of this artwork begins to burn, the world from before can never be returned to. The people who interact with the artwork cause this outcome.”