teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity | teamLab

Name: teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity
Start: 2026-09-22
End: 2027-02-21
Location: Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago

teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity

2026.9.22(Tue) - 2027.2.21(Sun)Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Chicago

teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity

2026.9.22(Tue) - 2027.2.21(Sun)Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Chicago

Opere

Sea of Darkness, Memory Shining from the Depths

Darkness is in front, and light exists in the depths.Substance and perception become ambiguous, and physical boundaries disappear.The sea gently ebbs and flows in the eternity of time.
The black of the lines that trace the waves is darkness — that is, a state without light. However, the lines drawn by the darkness, which are void of matter or light, appear in front of the shimmering light and continue to flow.
To recognize existence does not involve the presence of objects or light.Existence is born and shaped in relation to its surroundings.
Here, the waves are drawn through Ultrasubjective Space, and thus become a pictorial space that restores bodily freedom.
On the other hand, while the pictorial world is depicted on the screen, a strong shimmering light simultaneously covers that world. This shimmering light is caused by the light itself that depicts the world of waves reflecting on the surface of the screen.The shimmering light continues to change with the passage of time, even if the viewer does not move. Furthermore, in response to the environment and the moving body of the viewer, its appearance changes, and shines from the depths of the pictorial world. While appearing across the entire screen, the shimmering light is an extremely personal light, existing only within the viewer's own perception.
The space created by this shimmering light is not an illusion of depth depicted on a flat painting. It is a space that emerges at that moment through the movement of the viewer's body and the light that depicts the world of waves.The only physical material is copper. The pictorial space created by the group of shimmering points is generated within the relationship among the physical material, time, light, the environment, and the viewer's body, and emerges within the viewer's perception. While appearing on the screen, the pictorial space is continuous with the real space where the body exists, and expands into the depths of the pictorial space as a bodily space of light.
The bodily pictorial space drawn through Ultrasubjective Space and the bodily space of light created by the shimmering light overlap. There, the waves drawn by darkness, the copper surface, the shimmering light, the environment, and the viewer's body and perception interact with each other, and a boundless bodily pictorial world of light emerges, continuous with the space where the body exists.

Vedi Altro

Dissipative Figures - Human

A person is not depicted by the contours of the body.
When a person moves, the surrounding environment, such as the air, also moves. As long as people live, they continuously dissipate energy into the world and keep moving the surrounding environment. This artwork does not depict the material surface boundary of the person itself, but depicts the existence of a person through the energy that people continue to give to the world and the resulting movement of the environment.
The contours of life’s existence are not the surface boundary of the body, but something ambiguous that includes the environment that is continuous with the body. People continuously breathe, move, emit heat, vibrate the air, and dissipate energy into their surroundings. Being consists of the body and the environment that is continuous with it.
When viewers pass in front of the artwork, the viewers themselves also move the surrounding environment. This movement occurs in the same space as the space where the depicted person is. The movement of the depicted person and the movement of the viewer blend together within the same flow of energy, and the lines that depict the person are disrupted and change due to the movement of the viewer.
A portrait is not an image for looking at the depicted person from the outside, but becomes a continuous field where the depicted person and the viewer exist within the same environment.
Objects like stones continue to exist even if placed in a closed box, sealed off from the outside world. But life cannot maintain its existence in such a closed box. Life consumes external matter and energy as food and discharges it, maintaining its structure as the energy dissipates.
Life is like a vortex created in the ocean, an existence within a flow, and the boundaries of its existence are ambiguous, an existence within an infinite continuity.
To be alive is to constantly dissipate energy into the world and be continuous with the world, an open existence.

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Dissipative Figures - Murmuration

A murmuration is not depicted by the contours of individual birds.
When birds fly, the surrounding environment, such as the air, also moves due to the flapping of their wings and the movement of their bodies. As long as birds live, they continuously dissipate energy into the world and keep moving the surrounding environment. This artwork does not depict the material surface boundary of the bird itself, but depicts the existence of the murmuration through the energy that the murmuration continues to give to the world and the resulting movement of the environment.
A murmuration is not an accumulation of individual birds, but a giant, organic phenomenon of collective flight. The birds rise up in the space like a single large entity, while mutually changing their distance, direction, and speed from each other. The contours of its existence are not the surface boundary of individual birds' bodies. It is something ambiguous that includes the bodies of the birds, the flow of air that is continuous with them, and the energy dissipated into the surroundings.
When viewers pass in front of the artwork, the viewers themselves also move the surrounding environment. This movement occurs in the same space as the space where the depicted murmuration is. The movement of the murmuration and the movement of the viewer blend together within the same flow of energy, and the lines that depict the murmuration are disrupted and change due to the movement of the viewer.
This painting is not an image for looking at the murmuration from the outside. It becomes a continuous field where the depicted murmuration and the viewer exist within the same environment. The murmuration is not a closed existence on the other side of the screen, but changes its appearance while blending with the environment moved by the viewer's body.
Objects like stones continue to exist even if placed in a closed box, sealed off from the outside world. But life cannot maintain its existence in such a closed box. Life consumes external matter and energy as food and discharges it, maintaining its structure as the energy dissipates.
Life is like a vortex created in the ocean, an existence within a flow, and the boundaries of its existence are ambiguous, an existence within an infinite continuity.
A murmuration is also an existence that emerges within a flow. Through the continuity of individual birds' bodies, the movement of air, the dissipated energy, the viewer's body, and the surrounding environment, a giant phenomenon of a murmuration is born.
To be alive is to constantly dissipate energy into the world and to be an open existence, continuous with the world.

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Order in Chaos

The strokes of color in this artwork do not have an overall focus; there is no guidance and no external influence. Through simple, localized interactions between the strokes themselves, and between the strokes and people, spontaneous order continuously emerges on its own, even as everything moves toward disorder.
Even if individual strokes are distant in space and time, when order is born, the individual elements transcend spatiotemporal discreteness and variability, appearing as a single entity. Despite significant changes in shape or size on the surface, or even if the elements are replaced, this spatiotemporal existence is maintained. Existence is not an accumulation of materials, but the order itself.
Existence is a part of the sea of disorder. It is eventually swallowed up by the disorder, and yet it continues to re-emerge. Order and disorder, existence and the whole, continuously flow into one another without boundaries, as they rise and fall, collide and merge.
This artwork is not an illusion that reveals a space on the other side of the screen. Within the actual space, the strokes continue to move across its surface. Walls and floors do not act as a boundary surface separating the viewer and the space of the artwork, but are the very places where the artwork space itself comes into existence.
The space of the artwork exists within the same coordinate system as the space where the viewer's bodies are. The viewer does not look at the screen from a single fixed point. Moving their body and shifting their viewpoint, they experience the interior of this spatiotemporal existence where order and disorder are born, collapse, and are born again.
This artwork is an attempt to expand painting from a completed image, or a perspective illusion of space, into a spatiotemporal pictorial space that is continuous with the real space, and that self-organizes from localized interactions.

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Massless Suns and Dark Suns

We do not perceive the world we see.We see the world we perceive.
A group of countless spheres of light. When people approach the spheres, they shine brightly and the surrounding spheres respond one after the other.
When you widen your field of vision, spheres made of darkness also begin to appear, as though darkness has been solidified. However, these spheres of light and spheres of darkness do not exist. The spheres of darkness cannot even be captured on camera.
There is no material, such as glass, on the surface of the spheres; the spheres are made only of light. There is no material surface boundary, and the perception of the boundary with your body is ambiguous. In reality, light cannot solidify into a spherical mass in the universe. Therefore, the spheres do not physically exist.
This is a Cognitive Sculpture that appears only in the human world of perception. The materials are light and the environment. And the subject of its creation is the viewer's own body and perception.
The spheres cannot exist on their own - their existence is a phenomenon created in relation to their environment. The phenomenon created by the environment is shaped for the first time by the dynamic body and perception of the viewer, becoming a sculpture in their cognitive world.
The artwork explores the possibility of a new form of existence distinct from material existence, and questions the very nature of existence.

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The World of Irreversible Change

This work is both somewhere in time and here and now.
The world of the artwork exists within the same flow of time as the real world. Morning arrives in the artwork with the sunrise in the real world, and when the sun sets, evening begins. If it rains in the real world of the work’s location, it rains in the world of the artwork, and the flora changes every day with each passing season.
The people’s lives also change continuously depending on the time of day and weather of the real world. Festivals and events are held with the seasons, and as various stories are added day by day, the lives of people continue.
The actions of viewers influence the world of the artwork. The people in the artwork respond when a viewer touches them. If the interaction is limited, however, they eventually return to their daily lives. But if a viewer continues to touch people in the artwork, fights break out amongst those who are near to each other. The fighting escalates into deaths, eventually spreading throughout the city, which becomes engulfed in flames. The flames last for over a year, and as the city burns to the ground, the people in the artwork eventually die out.
Once the world begins to burn, the world from before can never be seen again. The actions of viewers do not just cause a temporary reaction; it becomes the history of the world of the artwork, and continues to remain as an irreversible result. The viewers themselves are also those who cause this outcome.
In the ruined city where not a single person remains, the sun rises and sets with the time of the real world. As time passes, after a few months, new flora begin to grow in the burnt ruins of the city. Flowers and plants grow, bloom, and scatter repeatedly, changing daily within the real passage of time. In spring, the flowers and plants grow deeply, flowers bloom in profusion, and birds sing. As the seasonal changes of the flora repeats itself, the world continues.
Even if human activity ends, time does not stop. The seasons turn, the flora are born, and the world continues to change.
The viewers, as the cause of history, continue to live with that outcome.

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Continuous Life and Death at the Now of Eternity II

Flowers are eternally repeating the process of life and death.

The flowers that bloom change daily along with the real-time seasons. As the sun rises where the artwork is located, the world of the artwork becomes brighter, and as the sun sets, it becomes darker.

The real time in which the viewer exists, the time of the city, and the time of the repeated life and death of the flowers, all of these different times intersect and overlap, while the viewer’s body, the city, and the world of the artwork remain connected. The artwork space is an overlap of different times and space.

The artwork is not a pre-recorded image that is played back; it is created by a computer program that continuously renders the artwork in real time. As a whole, it is continuously changing, and previous visual states are never replicated. The picture at this moment can never be seen again.

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Life Survives by the Power of Life II

Although self and nature seem distinct, they are actually a single entity, inseparable from each other. The opposite of division is not unification, and we might  realize that existences that appear to be distinct are actually part of a single whole.The blessings and threats of nature, as well as the blessings and threats of civilization, are continuous. Neither is there a source of absolute malice, nor can it all be dismissed idealistically. Nonetheless, we seek to affirm life in all aspects. Life is beautiful.
In this artwork, 生 (sei), the character that signifies life, is written three-dimensionally using Spatial Calligraphy. Spatial Calligraphy is a form of calligraphy drawn in space that teamLab has been exploring since it was founded. The artwork reconstructs calligraphy in three-dimensional space to express the depth, speed and power of the brush stroke, and that calligraphy is then flattened using the logical structure teamLab calls Ultrasubjective Space. The calligraphy shifts between two and three dimensions.
The space of a traditional artwork, framed by a lens or perspective, appears to be on the other side of the artwork’s surface: the surface becomes a boundary, and the space where the viewer exists is separated from the artwork space. However, one of the characteristics of Ultrasubjective Space is that the artwork surface does not become a boundary. Thus the space in which the artwork exists, transcends the boundary of the artwork surface and is perceived as though it exists three-dimensionally in the same space where the viewer stands. The artwork space is continuous with the viewer’s physical space.

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Sea

This painting comes into existence for the first time only at the moment when a person views the artwork. It exists as infinite possibilities of images until it is viewed, at which moment it is determined as a single image. The image continues to change with the passage of time, even if the viewer does not move. Furthermore, in response to the environment and the moving body of the viewer, its appearance changes each time, and shines from the depths of the pictorial world. While appearing across the entire screen, the image emerges as different each time within the perception of each viewer.
This pictorial space is not an illusion of depth depicted on a flat painting. It is a space that emerges at a moment through time, light, the environment, and the movement of the viewer's body. While appearing on the screen, the pictorial space is continuous with the real space where the body exists, and expands into the depths of the screen as a space of light.
The only physical material is copper. The image is generated within the relationship among the physical material, light, the environment, body, and perception, without the medium of video.
This artwork is an attempt to expand painting from a completed image, or an illusion of space depicted on a flat plane, into a pictorial space that is continuous with the real space and is generated from the relationship among time, light, the environment, the body, and perception. The image is a bodily space of light that emerges at each moment within perception.

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Su teamLab

teamLab (f. 2001) is an international art collective. Their collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, science, technology, and the natural world. Through art, the interdisciplinary group of specialists, including artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, and architects, aims to explore the relationship between the self and the world, and new forms of perception.

In order to understand the world around them, people separate it into independent entities with perceived boundaries between them. teamLab seeks to transcend these boundaries in our perceptions of the world, of the relationship between the self and the world, and of the continuity of time. Everything exists in a long, fragile yet miraculous, borderless continuity.

teamLab’s works are in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra;  Amos Rex, Helsinki; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, Istanbul; and Asia Society Museum, New York, among others.

teamLab is represented by Pace Gallery, Martin Browne Contemporary and Ikkan Art.

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