By Santiago Arias Orozco | Scribe<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s the secret behind the immersive galleries’ mounting popularity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Every footstep taken, dims the yellow-vintage light from the ticket office into darkness. Only the TV screens scrolling the pre-modernist painter’s biography light up the black tunnel that precedes 19th century France, made from brushstrokes and Edith Piaf \u2013 a popular French singer. The queue ahead shrinks, with more and more attendees crossing the curtain that shields fantasy from Toronto’s harbour front leisurely streets. Finally, ten minutes in with the tickets scanned, and the COVID-19 protocols explained, the black cloth rolls, welcoming all those who paid at least $49 inside the “Immersive Van Gogh” exhibition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The space, the size of eight olympic-size swimming pools, of glossy-concrete floor and white drywall, showcases the Dutch artist’s work without ever letting the public see the paintings. Instead, renowned pieces such as “The Potato Eaters” and “Sunflowers” were built from the details in a non-stop projected production. Set in a canvas that fills the room, water paint strokes pose beyond the glimpse of the eye, moving in front, beside and behind the spectators. Background music joins the display, pitching, slowing, ramping and silencing in symphony with the shapes that grow, swing and finally disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Museum Management and Curatorship journal, research and commentary publication on gallery and art collection management, sorted Vincent Van Gogh’s exhibition into a “multisensory experience.” This “distorts the feeling of time and place,” while submerging visitors in “a completely different reality.\u201d Yet the display hasn’t been the only one of its kind. Instead, it follows a common trend among Toronto’s galleries \u2013 immersionism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since they premiered during the awkwardness of Canada’s first COVID-19 summer in 2020, immersive art exhibitions have sparked a sensation. It all started with the Dutch painter’s multisensory gallery, which then accompanied Beyond Monet, Immersive Klimt Revolution, <\/em>and before long Frida: Immersive Dream.<\/em> The exhibits came to visit and stayed past the time they were initially expecting, while fully booking most of their functions, sometimes even months before their launch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n