Top Immersive Artists to Look Out For

No article on immersive art would be complete without mentioning Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese contemporary artist who is celebrated globally for her avant-garde installations that transport audiences into her unique vision of endless repetitive patterns. Kusama's work transcends traditional artistic boundaries to create all-encompassing environments that invite viewers to experience a dissolution of self into the vast, recurring landscapes of her creation. Her Infinity Rooms are masterpieces of illusion that are hugely popular on social media, using mirrors and lights to create seemingly boundless spaces reflecting Kusama's obsession with the endless and the repetitive. These installations showcase her extraordinary creativity and the depth of her engagement with the concept of infinity, but also offer a deeply personal glimpse into her lifelong struggle with mental health, making her work both visually stunning and emotionally resonant. Through her art, Kusama invites us to step into her universe, a space where the self is both lost and found within endlessness.

DRIFT, founded by Dutch artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta in 2007, has been a pioneering force in the fusion of art, nature and technology. With a multidisciplinary team of 65, they craft experiential sculptures, installations and performances that delve into the essence of nature's hidden wonders and phenomena, utilising technology as a medium to explore and reconnect with the Earth's intrinsic systems. Their work, characterised by a blend of depth and simplicity, draws insightful parallels between human-made and natural structures, employing innovative, interactive processes that question the essence of life and envision a hopeful future. DRIFT's creations often reach their full potential in public spaces or through architectural integration, thereby harmonising human, spatial, and natural elements. Their global recognition is witnessed in exhibitions and projects at prestigious venues such as the Biennale di Venezia, Pace Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum. With their artworks held in the permanent collections of major institutions such as LACMA, Rijksmuseum and SFMOMA, DRIFT has established a significant footprint in contemporary art, inspiring a reconnection to our planet through their visionary lens.

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist renowned for her compelling use of text and image to challenge perceptions and critique societal norms, particularly focusing on consumerism, feminism and identity. In her immersive practice, Kruger's bold, provocative works transform spaces into powerful interactive dialogues between the art and its viewers. Her installations extend beyond the canvas to envelop entire rooms and public spaces, employing large-scale, direct messages that confront and engage the audience in a visual and mental dialogue. Kruger's art has the ability to dominate environments and compel viewers to navigate through her juxtapositions of words and imagery, creating a pervasive enveloping experience that questions and critiques the world around us. As of February 2024, she has a show titled Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. ongoing at the Serpentine South Gallery in London, where she has created rooms that envelop the viewer with her signature fonts Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed.

Doug Wheeler is an American artist pivotal to the Light and Space movement, who has revolutionised the realm of immersive art through his groundbreaking explorations of light, space and perception. Since the 1960s, Wheeler has crafted environments that dissolve architectural boundaries, creating vast ethereal spaces that invite viewers to step into an entirely different realm of experience. His meticulously engineered installations often feature seamless, luminous fields of neon light that seem to extend infinitely, challenging the viewer's sensory experiences and blurring the lines between material and immaterial. Wheeler's art immerses the observer in a serenely contemplative state that evokes the sublime. Through his innovative use of materials, lighting, and architectural modifications, Wheeler invites us to question our relationship to the seen world. Notably, in 2016, his work heavily inspired Drake’s Hotline Bling video – yet another indication of how much immersive art has been embraced by popular culture.

teamLab is an interdisciplinary collective that merges art, science, technology, and nature through the combined talents of artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, and architects. This collective aims to redefine the way we perceive our connection to the world, erasing traditional divides and promoting a vision of life as an unbounded continuum. Through their groundbreaking work, teamLab aims 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.” Their contributions to the art world, widely recognised for blurring the lines between different disciplines and their popularity with the public, have secured their art a spot in the permanent collections of renowned global institutions such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.

Maja Petric, a modern new media artist, specialises in interactive art that weaves together light, sound and advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, computer vision, and robotics. She has been creating immersive artworks since 2001, including light sculptures and AI-driven art, which evoke “the sublime by revealing connections among people and other living things past, present, and future.” Her work aims to broaden the range of sensory experiences through which art is encountered, and she has developed interactive art environments for Microsoft, crafted immersive experiences for Hong Kong Landmark, and created permanent light installations for Google, among other projects. Her notable works include the touring immersive installation We Are All Made Of Light across the US and a series of interactive installations set in public parks, as well as commercial and private spaces.

Es Devlin is an artist and stage designer known for her work that delves into biodiversity, linguistic diversity, and the creation of collective AI-generated poetry. She regards her audience as a transient community, aiming to induce intellectual transformations by promoting active engagement in collective experiences. Devlin's artistic scope encompasses public sculptures and installations displayed at prestigious venues like Tate Modern, V&A, Serpentine Gallery, Imperial War Museum, and the United Nations General Assembly. Her versatility extends to kinetic stage designs for venues such as the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre, and the Metropolitan Opera. Additionally, she has orchestrated grand visual spectacles for Olympic ceremonies, Super Bowl halftime shows, and created monumental illuminated stage sculptures for international music icons such as Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, and U2. Recently, her work has been widely appreciated at the Las Vegas Sphere – the ultimate immersive venue.

James Turrell is another seminal figure in the Light and Space movement, whose work has been captivating audiences with his immersive art for over half a century. Turrell's work is an exploration of light and perception, as he crafts environments that challenge the viewer's sensory experiences – creating spaces where light itself becomes a tangible material. Through his meticulous manipulation of space and colour, Turrell invites participants into contemplative experiences that blur the boundaries between the physical and the sublime. His installations, ranging from the intimate to the monumental, such as the ongoing Roden Crater project (an extinct volcano in Arizona transformed into a massive naked-eye observatory) exemplify his mastery in using light to sculpt space and influence perception. Turrell's art is to be experienced, offering profound engagements with the essence of human perception and the inexhaustible mystery of light.

Marco Brambilla is a visionary artist renowned for his immersive video installations that transport viewers through elaborate cinematic collages of pop culture and art history. Brambilla's work is characterised by its complex multi-layered visual narratives, often created through the meticulous editing and compositing of hundreds of film and animation clips. His most famous piece, Civilization (Megaplex), is a prime example, presenting a dizzying, kaleidoscopic journey through the afterlife that is epic in scope and rich in detail. Brambilla's installations are visually stunning experiential voyages that engage the viewer in a critical dialogue with media consumption, celebrity culture and the saturation of images in contemporary society. By transforming familiar cinematic imagery into new, surreal landscapes, Brambilla invites his audience into a space where time collapses and narratives converge, offering a unique, immersive experience that challenges perceptions and provokes thought.

Refik Anadol is a Turkish artist whose data-driven work uses algorithms to create dream-like environments that merge the realms of art, science and technology. Utilising machine learning and architectural projections, Anadol transforms digital information into mesmerising dynamic artworks, effectively turning walls and facades into living canvases. His signature works such as Machine Hallucination and Wind Of Boston: Data Paintings showcase how data can be sculpted into fluid, ever-changing forms that invite viewers into a captivating digital dreamscape. Anadol's installations question the boundaries between the physical and virtual world, encouraging audiences to reconsider the role of technology in shaping our understanding of reality. Through his innovative use of digital media, Anadol crafts immersive environments that blur the lines between art, architecture, and digital ethereality, offering a glimpse into the future of artistic expression.