‘Beyond Van Gogh’ gives audiences a unique look at artist

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on July 13, 2023.

Paquin Entertainment Group photo "Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience" opens on Friday and runs through Aug. 6 at the Enmax Centre.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

When Paquin Entertainment draws the curtains on the Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience on Friday at the Enmax Centre, visitors can expect an experience unlike anything they’ve seen before.

Fanny Curtat knows that well.

Montreal-based Curtat is the art history consultant for the production. A PhD candidate at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal, Curtat is part of the team that helped develop the production for Paquin.

Beyond Van Gogh will run through Aug. 6. It’s open from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. Sunday to Thursday and 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Paquin calls the show a “beautiful and cinematic sensory experience” that transports guests through history, learning about Van Gogh’s background while viewing “hundreds of iconic masterpieces including instantly recognizable classics “The Starry Night,” “Sunflowers” and “Cafe Terrace at Night” plus many self-portraits.

Ticket prices start at $31.99 for adults and $23.99 for children aged 5 to 15 plus ticketing fees.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Curtat said the size of the Enmax is ideal for the show which needs a space of about 30,000 square feet.

“Convention centres or arenas are perfect for this show,” said Curtat who has been involved in various projects including exhibitions and conference cycles.

“There’s something incredibly powerful in his work that has been drawing in audiences all around the world for years and decades. It’s a very very powerful work and our project is really about finding new ways of presenting it using technologies that are growing and growing around us and finding ways to integrate them to this very much more classical art historical approach of showing Vincent’s work,” said Curtat.

“It’s really about blending this cutting-edge projection technology along with his work so that it allows the audience to literally be part of his work, to be part of the paintings themselves. So that’s something very attractive and interesting in of itself,” added Curtat.

Ideally to Curtat, such a show would inspire more people to become interested in art.

“For a lot of people, museums can be intimidating and this is by no means a way to replace a museum. That will never happen. I’m an art historian, I love museums, there’s nothing like the magic of standing in front of an original Van Gogh. There’s an aura to that that just cannot be reproduced.

“But there’s something that can be said about the possibilities of being inside a painting itself and so my hope is that for people who might not feel that art is for them or might have a hard time relating a 19th century artist along with their 21st century day, to experience an experience like that is meant to bridge that gap and show that there is something relevant in Vincent’s work. It’s something that’s very approachable, this device makes this very approachable. It’s like the walls are literally coming toward you, there’s something very directed and so my hope is that through this connection that people will have developed with Vincent inside this experience, maybe next time there is a place that has a Van Gogh on its museum walls they’ll be curious about experiencing the real thing,” said Curtat.

“There’s something of value there and certainly worth exploring.”

The technology has been around for about a decade and when the Paquin group reached out to the creative studio in Montreal they had a firm grip on it, she said.

“They wanted to do something about Van Gogh, that was their idea from the get-go and that’s when they reached out to me. The creative focus was really about this dialogue between their expertise and mine which is a reflection of the project, which is again this technology along with this history and where are the bridges, where are the connective dots, what can these tools provide in terms of storytelling, in terms of experience that helps connect audiences, subjects, time periods, all of these things.

The creative team was a collaboration between Curtat along with the artistic director and the lead motion designer.

The project plays a lot on scale, she said.

“Scale is really at the core of an immersive experience and it’s really what makes the difference from the museum experience. If you have a regular sized painting in front of you, you’re going to have a much more intimate relationship to it. But if you’re in a space that’s enormous, that’s so wide, the work is towering over you, you have a very different sense of it,” she said.

“We need a space that’s large enough to just house a project like this.”

More than five million tickets have been sold to experience in North and South America.

“It’s been incredibly, incredibly popular and we’re so happy we get to bring it to as many places as possible. We knew we had something we were happy but we created it during COVID so everybody was very much isolated. When it reached audiences and we got to see people in it, and we see people have such a wide array of reactions – some of them are just laughing and being giddy, others are more in a meditative, contemplative mood, others are just really taking it in, moved to tears, dancing. We have so many, many ways that this project touches people. And we’ve been just incredibly lucky to see it grow,” added Curtat.

“Freed from their frames, Van Gogh’s spectacular paintings appear on projection-swathed walls inviting guests to fully immerse themselves into the incredible detail of his work. Vincent’s own dreams, thoughts, and words are set to a symphonic score while guests are enveloped in his ever-shifting, swirling, and colorful flowers, cafes, and stunning landscapes, creating an unmatched narrative experience,” says a statement by Paquin Entertainment.

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