Artist Bruce Munro will create his largest work to date, with the enormous multi-acre walk-through exhibit.
The illuminated art installation is by internationally acclaimed artist Bruce Munro
Sensorio, an immersive new destination located in Paso Robles, California, announces the opening of its first phase in May 2019 with an illuminated art installation by internationally acclaimed artist Bruce Munro. The British-based artist will create his largest site-specific project to date, with the enormous multi-acre walk-through artwork, Bruce Munro: Field of Light at Sensorio. Field of Light is a sculptural composition that covers Sensorio’s rolling hills with an array of over 58,800 stemmed spheres lit by fiber-optics, gently illuminating the landscape in subtle blooms of morphing color. Powered by solar, the stunning exhibition is expected to captivate visitors, inviting them to engage with the countryside through an ethereal light-based, sculptural experience. Bruce Munro: Field of Light at Sensorio will open to the public May 19, 2019 (press preview: May 15, 2019) through January 5, 2020 at Sensorio, 4380 Highway 46 East, Paso Robles, California. For more information and for tickets the public may visit SensorioPaso.com or call (805) 226-4287.
Smithsonian Magazine has called Munro’s work “stunning,” while The Guardian noted, “This is art you feel, rather than art you view.” The Huffington Post said, “It can be hard to describe in words the gifts that Munro bestows on the landscape as his work escapes description in either written or photographic form, it is something to be experienced.” Theoretical physicist/Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek noted, “I had the uncanny sense that I was walking through my own mind, or at least a good model of it. I’ll never again think about brains, or myself, in quite the same way.”
Munro created an international sensation with a stunning Field of Light installation in Uluru, Northern Territories, Australia in 2016 that was met with instant acclaim. Involving 326 miles of optic fiber, Field of Light in Uluru has been seen by over 200,000 guests in one of the world’s most remote locations, and will remain on display through December 2020. The journey to that exhibition started in 1992, when Munro and his fiancée (now wife) took a camping tour of Australia’s red desert center. Struck by the thought that deserts seem infertile, until it rained and the flowers bloomed, Munro dreamt of a field of lights that, like dormant seeds in a dry desert, would quietly wait until darkness to bloom with gentle rhythms of light. The first iteration of Field of Light was not created until 12 years later, in 2004, in Munro’s own home field in Wiltshire, UK. Since then, he has been invited to temporarily recreate Field of Light in many forms: along water and through forests, in urban squares, on building roofs, and over rocky buttes.
Sensorio’s breathtaking exhibit will be larger in size than any other Munro exhibition internationally, and will be Munro’s first US exhibit entirely powered by solar. For Sensorio, Munro will create an even larger field, offering visitors an unparalleled experience of immersing themselves in a breathtaking otherworld. Other amenities include refreshments and a special terrace option offering viewing while dining.
Munro’s oeuvre aims to transcend time and space by inspiring moments of awareness, inviting viewers to contemplate a world larger and more mysterious than their own existence. Munro’s recent West Coast premiere at Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California, was described as “Spectacular” by the San Francisco Chronicle, and “Wondrous,” by San Francisco Magazine. KQED (PBS) declared the exhibit “Magical. His dream becomes your dream,” and The Mercury News added it “lives up to the hype. We never left Saratoga, yet entered into another dimension, exploring brilliant realms.”
London-born Bruce Munro is best known for large-scale light-based artworks inspired largely by his continuous study of natural light and his curiosity for shared human experiences. With a fine arts degree, early career training in the lighting design industry and an inventive urge for reuse, his art captures his responses to literature, music, science, and the world around him. His work has been commissioned by and displayed in special exhibitions in galleries, parks, grand estates, cathedrals, botanical gardens, and museums across the globe, including Longwood Gardens, PA; the Guggenheim Museum, NY; the Sharjah Museum of Art, UAE; Montalvo Arts Center, CA; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ; Desert Botanical Garden, AZ; Jeju Light Art Festa, South Korea; the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, CO; Sotheby’s Beyond Limits at Chatsworth; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Waddesdon Manor, the Rothschild Collection, Buckinghamshire; and Salisbury Cathedral, among others. Artworks by Munro are held in the permanent collections of museums and public art collections worldwide including the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology, Oxford; Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Art Museum, TN; and Texas Tech University Public Art.
Sensorio, the intersection of art, technology, and nature, has been designed as a destination for entertainment, exploration, meditation, adventure, and delight. Sensorio will honor the natural topography of the landscape and offer a wide range of amusing, mystical, and kinetic experiences. The Central California destination launches with the interactive light installation by Bruce Munro, as other exhibits and buildings are put into place for an expected opening in 2021. Future developments at Sensorio will include a hotel and conference center.
