Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart
Las Vegas
“Depending on your perspective,” said Todd Martens in the Los Angeles Times, “Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart is an art gallery, an indoor theme park, a place to take lots of Instagram photos, or the sort of indoor space that should be avoided at all costs during a pandemic.” The new Las Vegas attraction, created by the art collective Meow Wolf, opened its doors two weeks ago to begin what might be a new era for themed entertainment and experiential art. Omega Mart appears at first glance to be a typical supermarket.
But look closer at those product labels. Over here: “Emergency Clams” and “Who Told You This Was Butter?” Over there: “Plausible Deniability Laundry Detergent.” Open a refrigerator door and you may find yourself stepping into a towering rock canyon or any of dozens of other mind-altering environments. Omega Mart is “meant to welcome us, and then unravel until we no longer have a clear sense of place.”
“It’s impossible to take it all in during one, two, or a dozen trips,” said the
Santa Fe New Mexican in an editorial. Trust us, because that’s been true of the original Meow Wolf location: a former bowling alley in Santa Fe that was converted into a one-of-a-kind fun house by a group of scrappy artists who raised most of the funding by requesting a donation from Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. Crowds lined up from the start, said Teya Vitu, also in the New Mexican, and “the five years since have seen the company jump onto a superhighway of growth almost as surreal as its artistic creations.” After a corporate reorganization, more than $150 million was raised to export the franchise to several other cities, and though the pandemic forced Meow Wolf to delay plans and nearly halve its peak workforce of 500, two spin-offs are scheduled for 2021 openings, starting with the Vegas site, which is 2.5 times bigger than Santa Fe’s.
“In keeping with its origins,” said Geoff Carter in Las Vegas Weekly, Meow Wolf involved Las Vegas artists “at the ground level,” paying more than 300 to contribute to the Omega Mart experience. There’s a story element to the project—a mystery for visitors to unravel as they wander through portals in the market into a factory space or the darkly futuristic headquarters of the fictional conglomerate that runs Omega Mart. Still, you’ll make return visits “just for the art,” including Claudia Bueno’s Pulse, made from sheets of etched glass, and co-founder Corvas Brinkerhoff’s Vibration Elevator,
“a truly odd hybrid of discotheque, photo booth, and X-ray machine.” The Meow Wolf team “has a unique talent for soliciting works of maximalist art, collecting them in warehouse-size spaces, and tying all those artworks together through mystery-box narrative. Simply put, they build wonderfully weird movies you can walk through.”