Larger than life: Immersive van Gogh Experience comes to Hartford

Aug. 11—HARTFORD — Three hundred works by Vincent van Gogh come to life at the Connecticut Convention Center in "Beyond van Gogh: The Immersive Experience," to be presented through Oct. 2.

The exhibition has been on tour since spring 2021, when it premiered in Miami, and has been so successful that six additional tours were added to travel throughout North and South America.

The exhibit consists of three rooms.

The first is a history of van Gogh's life, written by Fanny Curtat, an art historian who is the creative consultant for Paquin Entertainment Group based in Winnipeg, and Normal Studio Space in Montreal, which created the exhibit. The history details van Gogh's life in the Netherlands and France, and has excerpts from his correspondence, including those with his younger brother, Theodorus.

Beyond van Gogh: The Immersive Experience

What: A 3D adventure of more than 300 moving images by the artist Vincent van Gogh (1853-90).

Where: Connecticut Convention Center, downtown Hartford.

When: Through Oct. 2.

Tickets: $49.99-$83.99 for adults, $28.99 for children ages 5-15, plus ticketing fees; group rates available.

Contact: beyondvangoghhartford.com

The exhibit then flows to a transition room called the Waterfall Room.

"It is a portal to prepare you for the projections," Curtat said.

The room presents a modern, moving digital piece that is homage to van Gogh's work with cascading, swirling colors as they drape over the entry to the final room.

Entering the third and final room, the visitor is awash with color as 15-foot projection walls surround you with slowly fluctuating colors and 300 paintings of van Gogh ebb and flow like a slowly trickling stream. Paintings such as "The Potato Eaters," "Café Terrace at Night," and "The Starry Night," take form and evolve with motion as stars swirl together and birds and clouds cross the sky.

"The show is not meant to feel like there's a beginning or an end," Curtat said, so when someone enters the final gallery there is never a sense of feeling that they're entering a story midway.

That isn't to say that there isn't some form of narrative, as the paintings — for the most part — are presented in chronological order, showing the evolution of van Gogh's work starting from his early work in the Netherlands, to Paris, his rise as an Impressionist, and to his work in Auvers-sur-Oise.

The one significant deviation from the format is a display of van Gogh self-portraits. They move and blink as they watch you, watching them.

"They are put together to give an idea of how wildly different they are and that tells you about him," Curtat said.

Choosing van Gogh, she said, was a great choice for this immersive presentation as van Gogh is still relevant.

"His art is very easy to understand," she said. "This art is ... raw communication. If people are not inclined to go to museums or are intimidated by museums, they have a connection to this artist that makes them want to see the original and go to a museum to experience it."

She said that people could see that van Gogh is more than just the painter who cut his ear off.

"His work was about going beyond pain, finding solutions in it ... in nature, finding beauty around you," she said. "It was about finding everything around you beautiful, like a bag of onions on the table, a pair of boots by the door. There's something compelling about that. That's what this show is about. It's going beyond the darkness.

"Nobody painted like he did," she said. "There's something about finding light in darkness."

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