London – Christie’s will host an exhibition of Marina Abramović’s ground-breaking Mixed Reality performance piece The Life at King Street from 8 to 22 October 2020. This will provide visitors with an opportunity to experience The Life, the first work of its kind to be offered at auction in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 22 October 2020 (estimate in the region of £400,000-800,000). The Life is a revolutionary fusion of art and technology, premiered at London’s Serpentine Gallery in February 2019, that allows viewers to have an intimate digital encounter with Marina Abramović herself via a wearable spatial computing device. A dimensional photographic capture of the artist – like a hologram – appears, performing a unique, meditative and altogether entrancing piece within a roped off five-metre circle before evaporating into thin air. Unlike Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality allows the other visitors and gallery space to remain visible at the same time, creating a unique interactive experience. Abramović’s pioneering use of this evolving technology reflects her longstanding interest in the limitations of the human body and mind: an enquiry that, since the 1970s, has given rise to one of the world’s greatest artistic careers. Marina Abramović will be the subject of a major solo exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts in 2021, the first time that a woman has been selected for the main galleries in the institution’s 250+ year history.

TICKET BOOKINGS

Timed tickets can be pre-booked using the following link:

https://tickets.christies.com/#/event-details/marina-abramovic-the-life

The performance is free to attend, and tickets are offered on a first come, first serve basis so please book early to avoid disappointment.

Due to social distancing, visitors must pre-book tickets to gain entry to The Life.

The opening hours for the performance are as follows:

10am – 6pm, Monday to Friday

12-5pm, Saturday and Sunday

The Life explores the theme of immortality “because you are there, preserved forever,” as Abramović commented.  The Life is offered for auction by Tin Drum, inc. in association with Abramović LLC. Marina Abramović’s exhibition The Artist is Present was staged at New York’s MoMA in 2010, setting a record-breaking attendance figure of 850,000 visitors over a period of three months – a record that still stands.