Balloon Museum

The world’s first travelling museum consisting entirely of colorful balloons of different shapes and sizes. Balloon and inflatable art, a Pop style to spread a social message. World-famous artists come together for the birth of the exhibition dedicated to Balloon Art.

The Balloon Museum opened in Rome in the former Atac depots with the exhibition Let’s fly. In about a month the traveling museum will be in Paris at the Grande Halle de la Villette with the exhibition Pop Air and then will fly to Milan at the end of the year.

An innovative and sustainable museum, a brilliant and original idea destined to touch various cities of the world, capable of changing the concept of museum institution itself, but also the perception of the visitor. The project of a traveling museum is not innovative, but what is exposed and offered to the visitor is one of the most original ideas of recent years. The Balloon Museum identifies itself as a sustainable museum, thanks to the program and the reuse and recycling of works of art, fittings and furnishings. The exhibition revolves around thousands and thousands of fully biodegradable balloons made from natural rubber latex. The aim is to minimize the environmental impact of the exhibition, triggering a reflection in the visitor on the theme of sustainability, raising awareness and reaching, thanks to the characteristic of being itinerant, as many people as possible, different cities and different cultures.

The works on display are installations and sculptures on a monumental scale and with an interactive character: the audience can interact, touch, experiment, go through and even swim inside. A sensory experience that invests the visitor at 360 degrees, immersing him in a surreal but tangible inflatable world and bringing him back to his childhood. The balloon is, in fact, the symbol of the first phase of life, the symbol of lightness and lightness, joy and freedom. Themes perfectly in line with many artistic currents of the past and that blends with many themes of the present.

The Balloon Art or Inflatable Art is presented as a modern extension of Pop Art, a bit for style and a bit for the social message it carries. It is a real artistic technique that consists in assembling and modifying balloons creating objects, works, sculptures and installations of all kinds and shapes, sizes and colors.

Among the protagonists in Rome of the exhibition Let’s Fly, the first exhibition of Balloon Art in Italy, there are names of international artists.

Cyril Lancelin, French architect-artist, creator of gigantic futuristic installations, presents for the first time in Italy, Knot, a giant knot, a primitive figure on which models a three-dimensional structure, within which the visitor can walk, by being immersed in a labyrinthine dimension.

Penique Productions, a Spanish collective focused on ephemeral installation, heirs of the packaging of the Bulgarian land artist Christo, create, at the Balloon Museum, a huge inflatable on the shades of blue that occupies an entire exhibition hall creating an icy atmosphere perfectly inserted in the industrial context, which generates a sense of alienation, fed by the icy car placed in the center, in a total state of neglect.

Pneuhaus & Bike Powered Events, from New York bring to Italy a participatory installation, a grove fed by visitors themselves who generate energy by cycling. The aim is to raise public awareness of the conscious production of energy.

Never Ending Story by Motorefisico, creates a unique infinity room: the visitor is projected in a seemingly endless space, surrounded by 1300 colored balls suspended in the void that together with reactive sound lighting, alters the perception of space and distances.

Quiet Ensemble, whose research is based on the observation of the balance between chaos and control, nature and technology, create Hypercosmo, a sea of balls that color following the rhythm of music that narrates the cycle of life in which sea, Heaven and earth come together in a single dimension where the visitor can literally dive into it.

The internal production Lux leads to the Balloon Museum: Hot Air Balloon, colorful balloons flying invisible and Magic Mushroom, a wonderful journey between reality and fantasy, tribute to Alice in Wonderland.

Walking through the immersive installations and continuing the exhibition path you will find sitting rooms, decorated with masterpieces of art history modeled with balloons. The visitor can continue to fantasize by dipping his head in the clouds and climbing on an inflatable balloon, admire a tank of colorful balloons in real size that turns the icon of war in the symbol of peace, Walk through a three-dimensional chromatic wall to arrive at a space illuminated by dancing lights that is directed towards the outside world.

Photos made by Carlotta Ceccarini