Cover En Voyage with Claude Monet (Image: courtesy of En Voyage with Claude Monet)
Approximately 200 of the legendary French impressionist’s paintings and his studio in France will be turned into an immersive exhibition, which tours to Hong Kong this October

En Voyage with Claude Monet is coming to Hong Kong's Xiqu Centre in the West Kowloon District for three months from October 27, and it will be the exhibition’s first time in the city.

This 36-minute immersive experience takes visitors into the impressionist artist’s paintings, which are animated and enhanced by light and sound designs by Belgian digital art studio Dirty Monitor.

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Above En Voyage with Claude Monet (Image: courtesy of En Voyage with Claude Monet)

The exhibition features a few spaces. In the immersive room, Monet’s masterpieces, such as Impression, Soleil Levant (1872), which were created during his time in Paris, London, the Netherlands and Norway, are animated and projected in 360 degrees for a truly enveloping experience. Visitors can sit on the iconic lilac field from Springtime (1872) or take a stroll with the Madame Monet from The Woman with Parasol (1875).

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Above En Voyage with Claude Monet (Image: courtesy of En Voyage with Claude Monet)

Charles Wong, the director and curator of the show, works with Belgium’s art tech company Dirty Monitor on merging Monet’s paintings into a single landscape, which will be accompanied by music produced by Echo Collective. “It will be like facing the panoramic view Monet himself saw while painting those landscapes,” Wong says.

In the interactive room, Monet’s atelier in Giverny, France has been recreated in a 12-minute VR experience. Visitors can “walk into” the artist’s art studio to get a sense of his creative process.

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Above En Voyage with Claude Monet (Image: courtesy of En Voyage with Claude Monet)

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.

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Above The team behind the exhibition, including Julien Loïc Garin (fourth from left) and Charles Wong (middle)

He adds that Monet’s 1872 painting Impression Soleil Levant (“Impression Sunrise”)—mocked by the critics when first exhibited before later being recognised as a masterpiece—gave the entire Impressionist movement its name. “It is therefore important for us to be able to increase art education and appreciation in Hong Kong through such a key artist,” he says.

Tickets can be purchased from KKday.

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