Magik Gallery – Highlighting Artists Using VR as Their Canvas

Nick Ochoa curated some of the top artists producing work entirely in VR for the Magik Gallery show that happened in San Francisco, CA on May 20th. It was an ambitious effort to introduce VR creation tools for artists within a fine arts context in the Terra Gallery space. There were physical posters of scenes showed around 15-20 VR stations featuring an individual piece of art, as well as opportunities to try some of the VR art tools like TiltBrush. Most of the VR art pieces featured some dimension of scale or vastness that showcased some of the unique affordances of art within VR, and the intention was to inspire the art scene within San Francisco for how VR could be used as a medium for expression and storytelling. I had a chance to catch up with Magik Gallery founder Ochoa the day before the showing to talk about his efforts to get art within VR to be taken more seriously within the larger art world.

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The VR artists featured in the show were Steve Teeps, Vladimir Ilic, Liz Edwards, Sougwen Chung, Issac “Cabbibo” Cohen, Danny Bittman, Sutu, Wesley Allsbrook, Mike Jelinek, Abraham Aguero, and Edward Eyth. The write-up by VRScout’s Jesse Damiani features more information on some of the individual art pieces that were being shown, as well as in this twitter thread:

Magik Gallery is going to be focusing on holding VR art shows in physical spaces as there are a number of other virtual art gallery initiatives and efforts for virtual spaces.

Other VR Art Initiatives

I’ve seen a number of recent gallery efforts including VR Chat’s Infinity: VR Art Gallery. No Proscenium has a great write-up about the Alejandro González Iñárritu piece Carne Y Arena that is showing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (and it is sold out until September).

• Acute Art VR aims to be Contemporary Art’s Virtual Reality Home & features work by Marina Abramović, Jeff Koons, and Olafur Eliasson
• The FLOAT Museum pilot @ SFMOMA featured some VR art during GDC
• The VR Society’s The Art of VR Show at Sotherby’s just happened a few weeks ago.
• Zach Krausnick’s VR Galactic Gallery showed at VRLA and should be releasing on Steam soon

You can find out more information on the artists and Ochoa’s future plans on the Magik Gallery website and @MagikGallery on Twitter.

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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip