Hall des Lumières: New York’s First Permanent Immersive Art Experience
New York’s first permanent immersive digital art center, Hall des Lumières, opens in Lower Manhattan September 14 with a splashy show featuring the work of 19th century Viennese artist Gustav Klimt. Tickets are on sale now.
The opening of HDL at 49 Chambers Street, is part of a global trend toward permanent immersive art complexes that are aimed bringing historically significant art masterworks to mass audience that are more accustomed to whiz bang digital stimulation than stayed museum environements.
Among HDL’s forebearers: AREA15 and Omega Mart in Las Vegas, Superblue in Miami, Atelier des Lumières in Paris, teamLab in Tokyo and Wisdome LA in Los Angeles. “Van Gogh: the Immersive Experience” was a huge success in its temporary facility at Pier 36 last year.
Among the shows drawing audiences around the world: “Frida: Immersive Dream” “Imagine Picasso: The Immersive Exhibition” “Beyond Monet” “Monet by the Water” “Gaudí: the Architect of the Imaginary,” “Chagall: Midsummer Night’s Dreams,” and “Dalí: The Endless Enigma”
From HDL press releases:
Hall des Lumières will be located…inside the elaborate former teller hall and vault level of the historic, landmarked Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank opposite Manhattan’s City Hall Park.
The inaugural installation will feature luminescent, 30-foot-high images of celebrated works by the legendary painter, moving across the spectacular architecture and mapped precisely to the exact specifications of the building, along with other sensory elements including a musical soundtrack arranged especially for this presentation. The experience is designed to bring guests through Klimt’s prolific career while perfectly complementing the marble walls, towering columns, stained glass skylights and coved ceilings of the grand space.
The first of the immersive art experiences created for the Hall des Lumières, where glowing, animated images of historic artworks are seamlessly united with music and landmark architecture, the inaugural exhibition Gustav Klimt: Gold in Motion is based on the glittering, sensuous, revolutionary paintings of this key originator of modern art.
In the unparalleled cultural and intellectual ferment of late 19th century Vienna, an imperial capital whose atmosphere has been characterized as “a nervous splendor,” Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) began his career as one of the painters decorating the sumptuous public buildings on the city’s grandest boulevard, the Ringstrasse.
As the new century dawned, however, Klimt began daring to express himself in a more personal and often erotic style, ultimately becoming the leader of the Vienna Secession, a movement that broke from the conventions of academic art and paved the way toward modern painting. Gustav Klimt: Gold in Motion takes its title from the gold leaf and decorative patterns that characterize his most popular and radical masterpieces, including symbolic works such as The Kiss (1907-08) and portraits such as Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907).
