If you’re an art lover looking for a colourful activity to do this weekend, the Imagine Van Gogh Immersive Art Exhibition is opening up to Londoners on Saturday.
The multimedia production takes images from Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings during the last two years of his life in France and presents them as light projections that has an ‘Image Totale’ — a 360-degree view — paired with a classical soundtrack.
“This kind of exhibition is here to share with people what is difficult to reach when you can’t travel to every museum in the world. Coming to London is another place to share this art with more people,” said the exhibition’s co-creator, Julien Baron.
Some of van Gogh’s familiar paintings featured in the exhibit include Sunflowers, The Bedroom, Starry Night, and The Yellow House.
With the exhibit’s success in other Canadian cities, including Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Saskatoon, bringing it to London was a perfect fit, said the event’s promoter, D.J. Williams.
“It’s just something that when you walk through this exhibit, you’re walking through the mind of Vincent van Gogh himself,” he said. “I recall seeing it the first time, and I was almost brought to tears after learning his backstory.”
The show has about ten panels that are roughly about 22 feet — 6.7 metres — in height, with 41 projectors used to prevent reflections and shadows.
The background music includes the works of composers Saint-Saëns, Mozart, Bach, Delibes and Satie. Williams believes it helps with offering a full sensory experience, which engages not just the viewers’ eyes, but their hearts and souls as well, he said.
“We picked tracks that could fit the mood of the different sequences,” Baron said. “It’s important for us to make the visitors understand what the artist wanted to convey in the first place.”
The paintings were a form of therapy for van Gogh, who had a very tumultuous life before he died at the age of 37 in 1890, Baron said. He believes the immersive experience offers viewers to easily dive into the paintings compared to traditional museums.
“We are very happy when someone walks out of the exhibition wanting to discover the real painting in the museum because it means they were touched by what they saw,” he said.
The exhibit will be at 100 Kellogg Lane until Jan. 8. Williams hopes that its uniqueness brings Londoners the Christmas gift of the year, he said. More information can be found
