Creative team Luna Luna has re-installed a "forgotten" art theme park in a Los Angeles production studio that includes a Ferris wheel by Jean-Michel Basquiat, a carousel by Keith Haring and work by artists David Hockney, Kenny Scharf and more.

Created by artist André Heller, the original fair took place in 1987 in a Hamburg park. Today's Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy iteration displays the rides and attractions as an exhibit, with some interactive elements and performers dispersed throughout.

Located at production studio Ace Mission Studios, today's Luna Luna adopts the moniker of its successor and is organized by a collective of the same name.

To enter the exhibition, guests pass by a recreation of a spikey red inflatable dome by Heller – which previously housed a cafe – into a corridor that displays the original fair on video.

Visitors then pass into two large warehouse spaces divided by an archway by artist Sonia Delaunay that reads "Luna Luna" in lights.

"The team's concept for the exhibition layout was to reference and celebrate the key characteristics, dynamic atmosphere, and formal relationships, between the artworks within Luna Luna's 1987 debut in Hamburg, while acknowledging that its new home within a Los Angeles soundstage is starkly different from the grass and mud of a tree-lined German park," director of spatial design Charles Dorrance-King told Dezeen.

"[The exhibition] required a modified approach that still spoke to the spirit of '87, such as utilizing Sonia Delaunay's archway not as an entrance to the park, but instead as a gateway between two adjacent warehouses. The first space highlights the spectacle, and the second focuses on the story of Luna Luna."

The first space contains a colourful swing ride by Kenny Scharf, which is spray-painted with cartoon figures, patterns and shapes reminiscent of the television the artist watched as a child.

Surrounding works also include a carousel by Keith Haring, painted with the artist's characteristic line drawings, including a self-portrait.

Seats made of the dancing figures were created for visitors to ride during the 1987 fair. Today, the rides operate and run during the exhibit, but are not ride-able for visitors.

Another carousel by artist Arik Brauer sits nearby, which features seats of fantastical creatures "straight out of one his mystical dreams", including a butterfly, a wolf, a mermaid and an anthropomorphic hand. A song written, produced and performed by Brauer's daughter, Timna was also integrated into the ride.

David Hockney's Enchanted Tree was also installed in the space, a circular pavilion with geometric trees painted on its exterior panels.

Visitors then pass into the next room, which contains a painted Ferris wheel by Jean-Michael Basquiat, accompanied by a custom music composition by musician Miles Davis, called Tutu, a pavilion by Salvador Dalí, and a glass labyrinth covered in Roy Lichtenstein-painted panels.

"We took into account the reflection of the Lichtenstein facade and glowing wheel of the illuminated Basquiat arrayed along the mirrored facade of the Dali, and the placement of the GilSing flags, which were wrapped around the perimeter of the exhibition as in the original park," said Dorrance-King.

Basquiat's Ferris wheel was painted in a cream colour and adorned with his recurrent illustrations and writing that speak to race, music and anatomy.

A wedding chapel by André Heller is also included nearby. Created by two abstract figures holding a heart between them, the chapel was a place where visitors of today's exhibition and the 1987 fair can marry "whatever or whomever" they please.

"Heller imagined Luna Luna as a 'total artwork' that combined visual art, music, theatre, design, circus arts and performance, and explained that the park aimed to recover public space for art and imagination," said the team.

Following its successful 1987 debut in Germany, the fair and its subsequent works fell into legal battles and were stored away in shipping containers in Texas.

In 2022, reports broke that Drake and his creative business venture DreamCrew invested an estimated $100 million for the entire fair, with plans to restore the rides for access to the public.

Today's Luna Luna exhibition took over a year to restore and reassemble.

"They've spent over a year caring for these works, rebuilding each ride and attraction bolt by bolt after they came out of the shipping containers in pieces – they know every inch of these works,"  said curatorial director Lumi Tan of the assembly team.

"Each attraction takes a small army to install: because of this, the installation and placement of the works were not just a curatorial choice, but one made in close collaboration with our spatial design and studio team. There is no such thing as a small tweak with works at this scale!"

Other recent design-related exhibitions throughout the US include an Alcova show displayed in a Miami motel and an exploration of Es Devlin's career in New York.

The photography is by Jeff McLane and Joshua and Charles White.

Luna Luna: A Forgotton Fantasy will take place at Ace Mission Studios in Los Angeles through Spring 2024.  See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.