Step into the starry night

A floor-to-ceiling immersive digital experience in Mumbai is transporting viewers into a three-dimensional world of Van Gogh.

'Sower'

One of the most influential figures in the history of Western art, post-Impressionist Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings are some of the most popular in the world and are housed in many museums and some private collections worldwide. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which owns the largest collection of Van Gogh artworks, is visited by millions annually — more than two million lined up to see paintings like The Bedroom, Sunflowers and Self-Portrait with the Grey Felt Hat in 2019.

But if museums aren’t your favourite way of getting up close and personal with art, then a new multisensory exhibition should be on your radar. The immersive exhibit Van Gogh 360° India opened at the World Trade Centre in Mumbai in late January. The first such exhibition to debut in India, the immersive digital experience is not an exhibition in its classic sense. Instead, it surrounds the viewer in Gogh’s sun-drenched and star-dappled landscapes.

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Attendees are immersed in floor-to-ceiling stunning projections that animate the artist’s oeuvre and illuminate his genius. Wandering through giant projections that highlight brushstroke, detail and colour, the multimedia exhibit takes the attendee into a three-dimensional world that exhilarates the senses. About 300 Van Gogh paintings are part of the exhibit, including the famous Starry Night, Sunflowers, Self Portrait, Almond Blossoms and more. Viewers are expected to spend between 45 minutes to an hour at the exhibition.

Immersive experiences that turn the walls and floors of exhibition space into a kind of dream world have previously popped up around the world from New York to London to Tokyo to Toronto, and have featured artists like Van Gogh to Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, Art Nouveau master Gustav Klimt, Cubism pioneer Pablo Picasso and Impressionism founder Claude Monet.

What then makes Van Gogh such a popular subject for immersive art experiences? “The vibrancy and details of his artwork are powerful and are very effective in an immersive environment,” say the spokespersons from Festival House Inc about their decision to add another Van Gogh exhibit to the world. There were nearly 50 such immersive experiences in the US alone. Nikhil Chinapa, DJ and music entrepreneur, is a big Van Gogh fan, and the spokesperson for Van Gogh 360° India. He feels social media has made experiences like these even more popular. “An exhibition like Van Gogh 360° is a likeable and shareable social media experience. Social media engagement has become a major component of public art and a consideration of how art experiences are created,” he says.

“Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings are some of the most recognisable in the world and everyone deserves to get up close and personal with his work, outside of museums,” says Chinapa, an art lover himself. At Van Gogh 360°, art and technology collide to produce stunning results. The exhibit uses cutting-edge projection technology crafted by a team of animators and composers to create an engaging journey into Van Gogh’s world. The technology includes large-scale 360 projection achieved through dozens of projectors and high-powered computer servers that deliver crisp and compelling images. More than 12,000 huge, crystalline images transform each surface as viewers walk through a cavernous display of paintings.

Van Gogh 360° will run in Mumbai till March 3. The exhibition will travel to Delhi in April and is also likely to make stops in Bengaluru, Chennai, Ahmedabad and other cities later this year.