From the inky darkness, flowers bloom. Many-petaled and vibrant, they stretch up, dwarfing the spectators below. Then they fade and shrivel, withering back down into nothing. Music swells as sunflower buds erupt, golden and glorious. The viewers’ cameras rise to capture the moment. One of the teamLab members, a former art major, whispers that this impermanence represents the perpetual cycle of life and death. Her words echo throughout each exhibition space.
In other rooms, flaming calligraphy overwhelms then evaporates, gleaming orbs spiral suddenly into towers and a soap bubble sculpture defies gravity. As physical as they are cerebral, the artworks at teamLab Biovortex Kyoto — a sprawling new museum from the renowned international art collective, set to open on October 7 — dazzle and disorient in equal measure.
teamLab, “Untitled” © teamLab
The TeamLab Experience
Founded in 2001, the teamLab artist collective has launched more than two dozen ventures across Japan and many more abroad. Tokyo hosts two of its most well-recognized museums: teamLab Planets Tokyo in Toyosu and teamLab Borderless: Mori Building Digital Art Museum in Azabudai Hills, which is considered the world’s first immersive digital museum.
TeamLab Planets provides the more physical experience of the two. Guests wade through water, chasing light projections of koi fish, or bounce across large rotating spheres as if in a video game. TeamLab Borderless, in comparison, is a labyrinth filled with light and sound, created to saturate the senses. Its exhibits, which respond to the movement and touch of visitors, invite introspection about the boundaries between oneself and the environment.
These two spaces exemplify teamLab’s signature blend of shadow and illumination, digital and tactile, and the intermixing of nature with technology. The new Kyoto location treads similar theoretical paths, but on an even larger scale, and introduces works that can’t be seen anywhere else in the world.
teamLab, Forest of Resonating Lamps: One Stroke – Fire © teamLab
Biovortex Kyoto: Same Vision, New Vibe
TeamLab Biovortex will open its doors on October 7, 2025, and is already anticipated to be as big a draw as its Tokyo counterparts. It’s part of an urban development initiative to revitalize the area southeast of Kyoto Station, turning it into an artistic hub. It has taken more than four years to complete and is the product of countless hands, from artists and musicians to programmers and mathematicians. The space will host more than 50 works across four floors and 10,000 square meters of space, making it one of the largest teamLabs in the world.
TeamLab Biovortex Kyoto takes the playfulness of teamLab Planets and pushes it into more conceptual territory. It revisits two frequent teamLab themes: “cognitive sculptures,” which create forms that exist only in the viewer’s perception, and “environmental phenomena,” where artworks are shaped by their environments. All the exhibits, including several unique to Kyoto, explore ambiguous edges, shifting conditions and blurred boundaries.
Highlights From the Museum
TeamLab Biovortex’s installations move fluidly between the gentle and the overwhelming, each probing the edges of perception. Two of them — “The Way of Birds” and “Eternal Universe of Words” — are housed within a mirrored hemisphere, and play out on a scale that is both astounding and slightly vertigo-inducing. They’re best experienced while sitting down. The former is the gentler of the two; flocks of spectral avians sweep overhead, choreographed to a gentle score. In comparison, the latter engulfs the viewer in a rush of sound and ceremony. Massive, crimson calligraphy floods the vision as bells toll and monks chant, their resonance recalling Kyoto’s temple precincts.
The museum’s two enchanting “Forest of Resonating Lamps” spaces are filled with the dim glow of hundreds of colorful lamps. When approached, they respond, flaring one by one, sending out ripples of light that travel across the mirrored space. The installation embodies a key teamLab philosophy that art is born through interaction. By contrast, in “Morphing Continuum,” the viewer’s involvement has little impact on the piece. The room is filled with constant, restless motion. Music drones and surges, its bass underscoring the roar and rush of orbs. They twist into towering DNA-like structures, break apart and hurtle chaotically across the space, then collapse back into piles on the floor.
teamLab, “Traces of Life” © teamLab *Reference Image
One of the most unique and arresting installations is “Massless Amorphous Structure.” Composed of floating soap bubbles that never quite touch ceiling or floor, it’s fragile yet self-restoring, breaking and reforming in response to touch. Existing only through the interplay of air, water and movement, its edges are deliberately ambiguous, prompting visitors to reconsider what it means for a work of art to have form.
Ephemeral yet unforgettable, teamLab Biovortex delivers teamLab’s distinctive vision on a grand scale. Its arrival in Kyoto expands the collective’s oeuvre with fresh artworks and room to explore its philosophy. But unlike the brief life of flowers, this new and ambitious venture is here to stay.
More Info
To learn more about teamLab Biovortex Kyoto and purchase tickets for your visit, click here.
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