Julien Loïc Garin, the director of arts and culture of the show, says that while the immersive show cannot replace seeing the artworks in person, it creates an additional experience for visitors to appreciate the details, colours and diversity of Monet’s creations. Further, that the digitisation of the artworks magnifies their details, enables visitors to “see and feel the large brush strokes or the small touches”, and “recreates the effects Monet was looking to make us feel”.
This is not the first Monet exhibition in Hong Kong. In 2016, 16 of the artist’s landscape paintings were displayed in Claude Monet: The Spirit of Place at Hong Kong Heritage Museum. But Garin says that this new immersive show stands out with the number and variety of pieces selected, which comprehensively showcase the creative evolution of the artist during his travels in Europe. “This [scale] is an achievement which is almost impossible with original works,” he says.