Marvel at the Delirious Environments of SuperReal, a New Pop-Up Art Attraction Cooked Up by New York’s Glitziest Italian Restaurant

Cipriani is getting in on the pop-up museum trend. The owners of
the Italian luxury restaurant empire have teamed up with multimedia
studio the Moment Factory to launch a remarkably
enjoyable immersive summer art experience called SuperReal. At turns abstract, surreal, and
futuristic, the installation’s heart is a 45-minute animation that
runs on a loop, transporting the viewer into multidimensional
realms that blur the lines between the physical and the digital
worlds.

The SuperReal experience takes place at 25 Broadway, a
landmarked historical building that has operated as a Cipriani
event space since 2000. Built in 1921, the Italian
Renaissance-style building originally served as a ticketing hall
for the Cunard Steamship Line. Travelers would buy passage for
transatlantic journeys beneath the soaring ceilings of the first
floor lobby.

“It’s a really unique architectural building,” Mel Weigel,
a creative director at the Moment Factory, told artnet News. “We
were just very much inspired by the beauty and history of 25
Broadway, and we wanted to make a historical landmark accessible to
the public. Cipriani hosts incredible events, but generally
speaking, they’re all private events.”

In comparison, anyone can buy a $24 ticket to SuperReal
(children six and under are free). That might seem pricey when you
consider it’s only a dollar less than New York’s Metropolitan
Museum of Art, but it’s par for the course for these pop-up
experiences (actually, it’s on the lower end).

For your money, you get a rather engaging experience. The visual
effects created by the Moment Factory team are truly remarkable,
transforming the building’s great hall into a series of dreamlike,
otherworldly environments, all set to evocative music from the
likes of John Cage and Tim Hecker.

Most pop-up museums rely on set design, creating colorful,
interactive photo backdrops that visitors can pose with on social
media. Not so at SuperReal, which presents an ever-shifting
kaleidoscope of animated landscapes, from a classical sculpture
garden, to a bright blue sky of free-floating mylar balloons, to a
swirling galaxy of shooting stars, to an array of giant, blooming
flowers.

Posing for photos is tough because the room is dark for most of
the video, but you can take a break from the search for the perfect
selfie to lie back on a beanbag chair or the mirrored floor and
enjoy the show.

The building’s great hall proves the perfect canvas for the
Moment Factory’s masterful use of projection mapping, the
discipline that launched the company’s reputation. “It’s been at
the heart of what we’ve done, way before the immersive pop-up
concept,” Jamie Reilly, a Moment Factory producer, told artnet
News, noting that the company has worked on productions for such
varied clients as Madonna, the NFL, and the Los Angeles
Airport.

“We have a big team of highly specialized animators and sound
designers,” said Weigel. “We’re very collaborative. It’s really a
big joint effort of creative technology and technical
creativity.”

SuperReal is entirely site-specific, with the animated designs
meshing perfectly with the ornate moldings, panels, and other
architectural details of the space. At times, it is almost
impossible to tell where the architecture ends and the animations
begins—which is of course the point. Where does reality end and the
imagination begin?

“It’s impressions,” said Weigel. “It’s an experiment in moods
and sound, and it’s really something playful.”

See more photos of SuperReal below.

SuperReal is on view at 25 Broadway, New York, August
1–September 2, 2019.

The post Marvel at the Delirious Environments of SuperReal,
a New Pop-Up Art Attraction Cooked Up by New York’s Glitziest
Italian Restaurant appeared first on artnet News.