The Resurrected Art Carnival Enchanting LA Crowds After 30 Years in Storage

During the summer of 1987, a one of a kind carnival unfolded across a public park in Hamburg, Germany. Navigating through a brightly lit archway adorned with paintings by French artist Sonia Delaunay, excited visitors found themselves immersed in Luna Luna, a fantastical art amusement park. Replete with a host of rides, interactive installations, games, kiosks and performances, each conceived by a renowned figure from 20th-century art history, Luna Luna attracted nearly a quarter of a million visitors during its inaugural staging.

Born from the belief that, “Art should come in unconventional guises and be brought to those who might not ordinarily seek it out in more predictable settings,” Luna Luna was the brainchild of Austrian writer and artist André Heller. Heller was inspired by the traditional Luna Park amusement parks of the first half of the twentieth century, adding his visionary, and extraordinarily ambitious, slant to the much-loved concept.

Heller commissioned thirty-five influential artists to bring his spectacular idea to life, including Delaunay, Salvador Dalí, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Rebecca Horn, and Roy Lichtenstein. The artists involved spanned diverse artistic schools — from Abstract Expressionism to Art Brut, Dada, Fluxus, Neo-Expressionism, Nouveau Réalisme, Pop Art, and Surrealism — introducing visitors who weren’t necessarily a typical art audience to a breadth of movements.

Intended for a worldwide tour, a change in ownership following its initial debut led to an unfortunate and protracted legal dispute, resulting in the project being confined to storage in Texas for decades — that is, until now. Currently on show in Los Angeles and running until Spring 2024, Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy offers the public unprecedented access to the art fairground for the first time in thirty years.

Conceived as a sprawling and immersive exhibition, the presentation follows the acquisition of Luna Luna by Drake’s entertainment company, DreamCrew, back in 2022. Merging history and spectacle, the show has been developed by Luna Luna’s creative studio, headed by Michael Goldberg of Something Special Studios and Charles Dorrance-King, with curation led by Lumi Tan and curatorial advisor Helen Molesworth.

Upon entering the exhibition, the audience are welcomed by a meticulous recreation of Heller’s inflatable work, Dream Station. Keep walking through a shadowy blue corridor to be met by Kenny Scharf’s brilliant painted chair swing ride, Hockney’s Enchanted Tree, Basquiat’s illustrative Ferris wheel, and more. Deeper within the expansive space, discover Manfred Deix’s Palace of the Winds, Arik Brauer’s Carousel, and the photo archives of Sabina Sarnitz, who documented Luna Luna’s development in more than ten thousand images across multiple cities from 1986.

In addition to the artist-created rides and attractions, the vast exhibition showcases films and drawings that explore the inspiration for Luna Luna, as well as glimpses into the process of reassembling the works. The whole experience spans a 60,000- square-foot warehouse, located on the east side of LA on the border of the city’s downtown Arts District. And if you can’t make it this time but want to see more, Phaidon has published the reissued Luna Luna book, which documents the creation of the 1987 extravaganza, newly translated from German into English.

Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy is open now and runs through Spring 2024 — for more information and tickets, visit lunaluna.com.



Feature image: Aerial view of Luna Luna in Moorweide park. Hamburg, Germany, 1987. Photo: © Sabina Sarnitz. Courtesy Luna Luna, LLC