Photostory: Imagine Van Gogh exhibition

The Imagine Van Gogh experience was held in Edmonton at the Edmonton Expo Centre. It opened in July 2021, and ran until September 26, 2021. The experience takes you through two large rooms, the first with hanging portrait frames that each tell a snippet about Van Gogh and his life. As you move into the next main room, you are surrounded by wall-to-wall projections of his artwork. These consume the eye with a magical kind of awe as you are absorbed into the world of his art.

Boats on the Beach at Sainte-Marie-De-La-Mer

This piece was incredibly captivating due to the way the floor was projected upon. You felt a vast sense of being enveloped by the art, swallowed by the sea, and a great sense of movement through the ripples and lines of the painting.

Starry Night Over The Rhone

This piece is one of the very popular, but lesser known “Starry Night’s” that Van Gogh painted. A very cool feature of the exhibit was the biographical information at the beginning before you walk into the projection room. It was stated that Van Gogh painted “A Starry Night” when he was attending an asylum for his mental health in 1889. This “Starry Night Over The Rhone” was painted before the popular “Starry Night,” in 1888. Standing in the middle of the projections, you felt as though you were really transported into the sky.

Sower With Setting Sun

The dark room was lit with rays of sunlight as this piece emerged onto the screens; it truly looked like the sun was rising early in the morning. This was an effect that wouldn’t have been possible if you were in a museum just looking at the canvas. Instead, the whole room was engulfed by the brush strokes and colours, and it really felt as though you were standing in the middle of this farmer’s field.

Rowing Boats on The Banks of The Oise

This demonstrates how the exhibit was able to crop the artwork into fragments across the screens — something that can’t be achieved over a singular canvas. This way, the audience was able to see each section more clearly. The brush strokes, colours, and ambience of each piece becomes heightened by doing this.