Immersive Art Exhibitions: Art or Entertainment?

It’s my first visit to Phoenix West, a former steel mill in the western German city of Dortmund. The disused blast furnace has been renovated and transformed into a venue for immersive digital art exhibitions. I’m here to visit the Phoenix des Lumieres exhibition that opened earlier this year and will run through December 31, 2023.

The exhibition presents the works of two popular but very different Viennese artists: Gustav Klimt and Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Klimt was an important figure in the Viennese Secession movement and was known for his gilded Art Nouveau works and sensual female figures. Hundertwasser was a visual artist, architect and environmental activist known for his colorful paintings.

A whirlwind of colors

I begin with Hundertwasser’s exposition. The artist’s famous houses are displayed on the walls one after the other, accompanied by background music. The buildings have colorful facades, the windows are irregularly shaped and plants adorn the roofs. As soon as I recognize a Hundertwasser house, a new motif appears. I’m immersed in art; dipped in it.

An immersive exhibition is incomparable to a traditional museum visit. Instead of carefully observing a painting, my eyes wander around the room, trying to follow the movement. Artworks zip past me and the explosion of color in every direction is magical.

Location is an integral part of the experience. The large former industrial site is spread over 3,000 square meters (32,291 square feet); high ceilings and generously sized rooms create a sense of endless space.

In Klimt’s world

Then visit Gustav Klimt’s 35-minute light show. Turn-of-the-century Vienna is projected onto the walls with its churches, streets, people – and Klimt’s portraits of women. From floor to ceiling, the space shimmers and shimmers and shimmers.

Background music alternates between dramatic and spiritual. We follow in Klimt’s footsteps to Austria’s Salzkammergut region, near Salzburg, where he created many of his landscape paintings. Finally, Klimt’s most famous painting “The Kiss” (1907-1908) is displayed.

This stunning immersive art experience was designed by Culturespaces, a French company specializing in digital art installations.

Culturespaces launched Atelier des Lumieres in Paris in 2018 and has expanded to other cities such as Dubai, New York, Amsterdam and Seoul. In Germany, the company will open a new space in the port area of ​​Hamburg this autumn.

The company intends to present works that please the public, such as “The Lights of Provence” by Paul Cezanne, “The Odyssey of Abstraction” by Wassily Kandinsky and “The Endless Enigma” by Salvador Dalí.

I know the director of Phoenix des Lumieres, Renaud Derbin, from France. He explains how it all started. “In the mid-2000s, we noticed that visitor numbers were decreasing at the castles and museums we managed in France, because young people were losing interest in museums. So we started creating digital concepts.”

art or entertainment

According to Derbin, Culturespaces was able to attract both traditional museum-goers and new audiences. Weekends at their exhibitions are often packed, and according to their website, their combined exhibitions draw 4.6 million visitors a year.

At the exhibition I attended, I noticed a mix of school groups, youth and seniors.

Notably, the exhibition provides little information about the two artists. Monitors at the entrance display brief artist biographies and list their most important works. I’m not the first to ask Derbin whether Phoenix des Lumieres can be considered an art exhibition or simply high-quality entertainment.

“This criticism has come up before,” admits Derbin. He says the company is thinking about how to provide more informational content without changing the original concept of presenting an engaging and enjoyable art installation.

Dalí and Gaudí in Amsterdam

Then I travel to Holland, for another Culturspaces exhibition in a 19th century gas factory in the heart of Amsterdam. This time, the focus is on surrealist painter Salvador Dali and Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi.

Pink Floyd music, images of disintegrating skeletons riding bicycles and long-legged animals flash across the walls.

Here, too, ample space is part of the experience. This extraordinary spectacle would never work within the confines of a museum.

Artists and background music are different in each exhibition, but the concept remains the same.

The rise of immersive art is more than just a passing trend. These days, even influential artists like 85-year-old David Hockney are venturing into the world of digital art. In Hockney’s recent exhibition “Bigger and Closer” in London, he uses digital media to celebrate 60 years of his work.

Immersive art experiences are worthwhile and can heighten people’s curiosity and encourage them to visit the original works in the museum. But even the most spectacular immersive art can’t compete with the originals – at least not yet.

This article has been translated from German.