Balloon Museum floats into Chicago
An incomplete history of inflatable ambition through the ages:
- 1488: Leonardo da Vinci sketches a life preserver.
- 1899: Ferdinand von Zeppelin lifts a city into the air.
- 1924: Macy’s parades the first oversize helium figures.
- 1966: Andy Warhol unleashes his "Silver Clouds" upon the Upper East Side.
- 2025: Chicago welcomes "EmotionAir: Art You Can Feel."
“EmotionAir: Art You Can Feel," the latest export from the itinerant Balloon Museum, positions itself as the natural heir in a centuries-long fascination with air-supported structures. Humans, it seems, have always been drawn to objects that defy gravity. They occupy space with both whimsy and audacity. What sets “EmotionAir" apart is its insistence on immersion. These are not works to be admired at a distance, but environments to inhabit—a tactile, playful and utterly exuberant continuation of the art form.
From the moment you step into The Fields Studios on the Logan Square-Avondale border of Chicago, you are engulfed by a riot of color, sound and movement. Massive balloons drift and sway, fans keeping them afloat, while pulsing electronic music fills the space. The instinct to touch, climb or tumble into the installations is irresistible.
Every corner of the nearly 20 soundstage-sized balloon-based installations presents a new surprise: swings that hang beneath glowing orbs, pits of brightly colored balls, and oversized inflatables that hover just out of reach, daring you to interact.
In this sense, “EmotionAir" is less about quiet reflection than about surrendering to the spectacle. It is a place built entirely for movement, play and the perfect addition to your Instagram feed. Here, participation outweighs contemplation. For those seeking a new photo opportunity to spruce up their dating profile, consider your search officially over.
The exhibition, which runs through April 6, moves quickly from one shock of scale to another. “Hyperfeeling" is a pool of yellow balls under a ceiling of balloons, lights and sound pulsing in rhythm with the space. You can lie back, roll around, or just watch everyone else trying not to fall in.
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"10 Agosto" suspends you on swings beneath glowing orbs. You swing. The lights flicker. The music thumps. It’s simple, but enough to make you forget where you are for a moment. "Aeroton" is a maze of rising and falling fabric columns, inviting you to touch, duck and navigate through the moving walls.
Refined in London, Paris, Rome and Singapore, and experienced by over 7 million visitors across four showcases since 2021, Balloon Museum knows how to stage a spectacle. In Chicago, that means smooth production, thoughtful choreography and installations by artists whose names you may recognize—or soon will.
There’s nothing sloppy about it. Even when you’re mid-tumble in a ball pit, the quality of the work is impossible to ignore. The balloons float just so, the lights pulse with precision and the sound design hits exactly the right note.
Every element is calibrated to maximize delight without ever feeling forced. It’s a rare kind of exhibition where chaos and craft coexist, and it’s this attention to detail that allows visitors to fully surrender while knowing they are part of something deliberately, carefully orchestrated.
“EmotionAir,” after all, is not a place for quiet thought. It’s for moving, poking and taking in as much as you can. No matter where you look, there’s something to crawl into, drift beneath or pose with around every corner.
People laugh. People stumble. People lean into the absurdity of a swing, duck under a hovering orb or hesitate just long enough to realize they’ll have to tumble into a pit of yellow balls.
By the time you reach the “History of Inflatable Art” timeline—Andy and Leonardo keeping company with a handful of other milestones—you’re a little dizzy, maybe a little sweaty and keenly aware that none of this has happened by accident.
The show has been building toward this moment all along, quietly accelerating as it goes. What began as novelty has inflated into something more total. You’ve been carried here, almost without noticing, to a closing argument that frames inflatable art not as a punch line or a curiosity, but as an experience that insists on participation and treats play as its own kind of seriousness.
The point of it all, as the exhibit states explicitly, is to feel. To feel slightly off balance on a swing, slightly startled by a drifting balloon, slightly ridiculous in a pit of yellow spheres. No lectures, no long pauses—just the immediate, simple and entirely absorbable sensation of existing in a room that wants you to notice it.