The room is large, with screens covering the walls and projectors hidden between them. In the middle is a curtain, with images projected on it.
Yes, you guessed it. There is another immersive exhibit in Ottawa. This one is called Imagine Monet by Image Total and it shows the thoughtfulness of the creators and their desire to stay true to Claude Monet’s works. The show runs Tuesday to Sunday at the EY Centre, near the Ottawa airport until Sept. 4.
The team of creators is director, Annabelle Mauger, technology wizard, Julien Baron and art historian, Androula Michael. Mauger and Baron are the founders of lililillilil, a company that creates what they call immersive experiences. Out of this comes Image Totale concept of which this exhibit is a part.
“Those exhibitions are for everybody, whatever your age, whatever your culture, whatever your language and I think that’s really important”
Annabelle Mauger, co-creator of Imagine Monet
The exhibit’s beauty lies in its simplicity. The room is big, with classical music filling the audio space. There are four park benches, good seats to enjoy Monet’s works. The digitized paintings move up or down, zoom in and out, all showing different aspects of the French painter’s art.
The heart of the experience is displayed on the middle curtain. The curtain moves making the evolving images appear in constant movement. This replicates the animation present in some immersive exhibits.
This is especially beautiful when Monet’s Water Lilies are floating on the moving curtain. The ripples on the pond at Giverney, France, (the painter’s famous garden) appear to be moving. moving.
Before you enter the screening area there is useful background information that will help the viewer to better understand the show.
One in the exhibit, there are several different sections, each focuse on an aspect of the great Impressionist artist’s work.
“Monet is the father of Impressionism, and one of the laws of Impressionism is to show all those paintings without frames,” Annabelle Mauger told Capital Current.
“When you’re in immersion, you can discover that because you’re inside the details, you’re inside the brushstrokes. And what you discover is that, for example, a figure, a little girl, a little boy, a flower are just brush strokes of … different primary colours,” she added.
By using a large room with big projections, visitors can see each brushstroke closely but can also see the painting as a whole when they step away from the screen.
Image Totale has a lot of experience with immersive exhibits. They were one of the first companies to create them in France. Mauger said that she considers herself “the mother of immersive exhibitions.”
“They are all different. The most important thing for me is that you always have to be honest with yourself. I am a director, I am not the artist. The artist is Van Gogh, the artist is Monet, the artist is Banksy. That is the most important for me.”
Annabelle Mauger
Mauger thinks that immersive exhibits are a new and versatile medium. “You know, it could be, I don’t know, Egyptian art, it’s not only paintings, it could be many things (…) it’s a new medium that is adaptable everywhere in the world (…) you are leaving something that is alive, and I think that is important.”
Mauger hopes that less well-known world-class artists can also become better know for their artwork through such immersive exhibits.
“Those artists exist, but they are not as successful as Van Gogh, Monet, or Picasso.”
