The Immersive Experience

Van Gogh

York St Mary's (also on at 106 Commercial Street, E1 6LZ)

£13.00 (York) £19.90 (London)

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience is a projection show of some of Van Gogh’s most established, well known and compelling artworks. Since Covid, art has understandably gone a little more digital - the Tate running virtual art exhibitions and the National Theatre releasing free recordings of some of their most iconic plays. However, physically stepping into a room with 360 projections of timeless classics? This is a new thing entirely, and one that I remained pretty sceptical for.

Weirdly enough, I had this exhibition double booked – one in London, and another in York. I couldn’t make the London show, as I had a last minute PCR panic, but I imagine that the same works were shown in York in the exact same way (potato, potata). York’s exhibition was held in St Mary’s church – a nice touch, as the church itself is a work of art and seems a suitable place to hold such timeless classics. We nestled onto some deck chairs along one side of the church and stayed put for the full 30 minute duration of the show.

Ummm… where to start. It was weird. Really weird. There were doomsday voiceovers of supposedly things Van Gogh had said (or what they imagined he would say), coupled with animated, massive versions of his works. When I say animated – think the farmers tractors moving along a landscape painting, or smoke growing in one of his more sinister and dark pieces. I think that they were trying to tell some kind of story through his pieces, however, this was unclear and disjointed - I think they were making it up as they went along. The church was a nice place to view it, however, the actual main hall of it was pretty small, and I imagine this may have been slightly more impressive in the larger-scale, ex-factory, London location. With less space, it was also hard to avoid getting distracted by the man next to me's mobile phone - brightness set up to 100 and video ON for the whole damn thing. Honestly, why can't people just enjoy things these days?

It was nice to get to see some works which I wasn’t previously aware of, such as Gogh’s skulls or portraits of his wife. But when these were projected so largely, they ended up losing resolution, quality, and, well… majesty. If Van Gogh were still with us today, I reckon he’d be flattered that someone thought to do this. However, I think if he actually attended one of these exhibitions himself, he would wonder what the hell these people were thinking; taking something so intricate, honest and emotive and turning it into commercialised, childish crap. Eeeeeek! Sorry.

OVERALL RATING: **

https://vangoghexpo.com/london/