Pace Art Gallery will place an emphasis on digital arts, many of which will contain an interactive element.

Silicon Valley, a place recognised from time immemorial as a culturally resistant stronghold, has established its first permanent contemporary art gallery.

Pace Gallery, based across 20,000 square feet of the Menlo Park area, is the brainchild of Laura Arrillaga Andreessen, (a prolific art collector and heir to local property magnate John Arrillaga), and Marc Glimcher, who runs the gallery.

Pace Gallery will place a strong accent on art constructed using digital methods with an embedded interactive element. The fact it is located in a former Tesla building serves to legitimise the artistic works that take place within.

Fittingly, the inaugural exhibition, which is named ‘Living Digital Space and Future Parks’, was created by a collection of 400 digital artists known as teamLab.

Digital art, as opposed to sculpture or mixed material pieces, are expected to be particularly effective in the technological heartland.

Traditionally, wealth in Silicon Valley is not displayed by a predilection for amassing collectable art; rather, it manifests in the form of eccentric dietary habits or a communal observation of faddish fitness behaviours that require investment and time.

There’s a certain standoffishness to art here like, ‘Is this a Wall Street scam because we don’t do Wall Street scams’,” Glimcher said. “Obviously digital art makes sense – technology based, which is of interest, and subversive, which is of interest – Marc Glimcher The emergence of Pace Gallery, should it endure, could go someway to encouraging a lifestyle movement that Silicon Valley has arguably lacked.