Immersive exhibitions have been highly popular in New York for the last couple of years. It was, and still is, nearly impossible to not run into a gigantic billboard advertisement for an immersive art show such as the Machine Hallucination by Refik Anadol, Yayoi Kusama's well-known infinity mirror rooms, as recently seen on the Everyday I Pray for Love exhibit at David Zwirner, or the most recent Van Gogh Exhibit New York City: The Immersive Experience which created an unfortunate sense of overexposure because of its conquering of every type of advertising possible. Looking at all the recent shows popping up in every windowless room in Lower Manhattan, it could be concluded that there are two types of immersive experience designs: the exhibitions that create a true sense of awe, or the ones that make an incredible photo opportunity for Instagram. While both are valid forms of immersive art, only a few establishments deliver at both ends of the spectrum.
Artechouse is one of them. Founded in 215 by Sandro Kereselidze and Tatiana Pastukhova in Washington DC, Artechouse creates innovative art spaces for immersive and interactive art exhibitions in four unique locations in the country.
Geometric Properties explores fundamental mathematical patterns to accentuate the pure wonderment of existing in the universe. With the combination of mathematics, nature, cinema, architecture, and artificial intelligence, Julius Horsthuis created the perfect substrate to either ignite a sense of deep introspection or provide a beautiful backdrop for effortless photos, depending on how much the visitor is willing to explore.
The exhibition opens with a large white box with multiple high-definition projectors that reflect fascinating fractal universes and a specifically curated evocative soundtrack onto the audience. The video itself loops in about every thirty minutes, but the visuals are so detailed that the visitors do not notice the repetition until the third loop. The colors are vibrant, and the music is loud, urging everyone in the room to silently observe the beauty of the mathematical universe and slowly slide into an existential crisis in a small windowless room in Chelsea. The second part of the exhibit includes the still images that get activated through augmented reality offered via the Artechouse app, which becomes a perfect transitional moment to the last portion of the exhibition, which is entirely about creating your own fractal universes through fully interactive screens.
As mentioned before, the best part of the piece is that it is entirely up to the visitors how much they want to dive in. The exhibit does an excellent job of catering to teens who are solely looking for the perfect Instagram image for that weekend, art critics who want to go through an existential crisis on a hot Saturday afternoon, or engineers who are mainly there to observe the technical nature of things. Overall, Geometric Properties is on until September 6, and you genuinely do not want to miss it!
