Detroit is welcoming a new artistic experience and exposing the city to works created more than 100 years ago. Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience presents over 300 paintings from Vincent Van Gogh rallying fanatics, old and new, to take a fresh look at the troubled artist and his incomparable work.
A Dutch post-impressionist painter, Van Gogh became famous for paintings depicting landscapes, still life, portraits and self-portraits. Creating more than 2,100 works of art, including 860 oil paintings, the majority of which came from the final years of his life, the artist left a legacy that can be shared for generations to come. Now, a team of world-renowned audiovisual designers using cutting-edge projection technology bring his work to life creating an engaging journey for viewers to fully dive into.
“The way we tried to approach the creativity is we wanted to steer away from the museum experience since we don’t have the painting and part of the museum experience, especially with the great masters, is seeing the actual painting,” says Mathieu St-Arnaurd, the show’s creator and creative director. “We began brainstorming ideas and we started talking about going beyond the myth of Van Gogh to meet Vincent, the man, the vision.”
Some of Van Gogh’s best-known works include The Starry Night, Sunflowers, and Cafe Terrace at Night, which the curators of the immersive experience reimagined by using movement to create a three-dimensional exhibit that thrills the senses and brings a new appreciation for the art. The masterpieces will appear and disappear, float across multi-surface all while dazzling onlookers.
“Instead of being very frontal and looking at the painting, I can actually look all around and look inside and be a character of the painting,” says St-Arnaurd.
Also utilizing the power of music, the production is set to a symphonic soundtrack to help further enhance the display. Taking viewers on a journey through the works, guests will see the increasing intensity and color vibrancy the artist used in his work.
“When we look at his body of work you see in the beginning a stern, no color, very dark, but it’s very luminous in a strange way,” says St-Arnaurd. “Then, the more you look at it, you see the colors appear and more and more color. When you juxtapose his mental state with his art, when life was throwing him a curveball, he responded with a painting.”
Guests of Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience will also get an inside look into the artist’s thoughts, dreams and ideas to help stage the narrative for the one-hour exhibit. Using cutting-edge projection technology, visionaries were able to bring to life the works of Van Gogh and create an engaging journey for viewers.
“What we want people to take away from [this] is really that it’s a very personal journey, Van Gogh painted emotions before anything else and we want people to go in there and feel what the [artist felt] and embrace it for what it is and how it makes them feel,” says St-Arnaurd.
Emotion and art go hand-in-hand and the creators of the show wanted to ensure there would be a unique experience. Unable to bring this many works in a traditional museum tour, curators opted to envelop viewers with each work of art.
“Art is all about emotion so when you go to a museum or gallery or an experience like this, it’s all about feeling. For me, it’s something collective but at the same time very personal” says St-Arnaurd.
Known in European countries, immersive art exhibits are starting to make their way to American stages.
“There was for sure an opportunity, there was a demand. People have seen images like this and want to experience something like this. But also, wanted to create something different and offer a new perspective on Van Gogh and the type of experiences,” says St-Arnaurd.
The Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience opens June 25 at the TCF Center and will run through mid-August.
