Superblue, the Miami-based experiential art centre, will open its first overseas venue in Kyoto in early 2027, with a major long-term exhibition by James Turrell as its opening show. The announcement, made on 5 November, places the new centre opposite teamLab's Bio-vortex Kyoto, the collective's largest museum in Japan, which opened in October 2025.

Founded in 2020, Superblue supports artists working in immersive, sensory art, opening its first centre in Miami in 2021 with work by Es Devlin, teamLab and Turrell among others. The Kyoto venue, designed with teamLab Architects, is its first outside the United States and forms part of a city-led regeneration plan for the area southeast of Kyoto Station, built around culture, art and young people.

Turrell, born in Los Angeles in 1943, has spent six decades making light and perception his subject, from the early projection piece Afrum-Proto (1966) through the Skyspace and Ganzfeld series to Roden Crater, the vast land work he has been shaping inside an extinct Arizona volcano since 1977. The Kyoto opening exhibition will span his early work of the 1960s to his most recent pieces, presenting the range of approaches through which he makes light itself visible and asks viewers to reconsider the act of seeing.

Further details, the full list of works, ticket information and the exact opening date, are due to be announced in December 2026. Turrell, who received the US National Medal of Arts in 2013 and Japan's Praemium Imperiale in 2021, is one of the most internationally recognised artists working with light, and the Kyoto opening marks a significant expansion for Superblue, which has so far operated a single venue in Miami.