Two years ago this month, “Beyond Van Gogh” opened at the Del Mar Fairgrounds and over the next few months more than 200,000 walked through the immersive exhibition. Later this month, it will return to the fairgrounds where it will alternate with a second immersive show featuring the life and works of the French impressionist Claude Monet.
“Beyond Van Gogh” will open its run Jan. 26 and “Beyond Monet” will debut on Feb. 6 at the fairgrounds’ Wyland Center. Tickets for shows through April 4 are now on sale.
Toronto-based Paquin Entertainment Group produced both exhibitions, which use projection-mapping and digital technology to remove the 19th-century paintings from their frames, blow them up to wall-size visuals and then animate them to create a sense of life and movement. The exhibits also feature original music and information on the painters’ lives stories. Since its launch in 2020, “Beyond Van Gogh” has sold more than 7 million tickets worldwide. “Beyond Monet” premiered in August 2021. This is the Monet show’s first visit to San Diego.
“Beyond Monet” features more than 400 of the prolific artist’s best-known impressionist works, including his Water Lilies series, “Impression: Sunrise” and “Poppies.”
“Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh showed a world filled with brightness, joy, color and emotion,” said Fanny Curtat, art historian for both exhibitions, in a statement. “While Van Gogh was seeking to create an art for the future, Monet wanted to submerge the audience in a shoreless landscape, making the work of these larger-than-life artists resonate even more with immersive experiences. To set foot in ‘Beyond Van Gogh’ and ‘Beyond Monet’ is to partake in the stunning vision of the world they created.”
For the Monet show, visitors will enter a gallery area where they’ll learn about his life and work and see images of his paintings. Then, as in the Van Gogh exhibit, visitors will enter the Wyland’s large, high-ceiling exhibit hall to see Monet’s paintings projected on the walls and floor.
Moving swirls of color reminiscent of Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous painting, “Starry Night,” are featured in “Beyond Van Gogh” at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.
(Rodrigo Gaya Villar )
“Through cutting edge technology, both Beyond Monet and Beyond Van Gogh are redefining what art means to people,” said Justin Paquin, president of exhibitions and theatrical for Paquin Entertainment Group. “It has elevated artwork to the next level, allowing us to form new relationships with notable masterpieces that were just not possible in previous years.”
Tickets are sold by timed entry, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily and start at $43. “Beyond Van Gogh” screens in the mornings and early afternoons and “Beyond Monet” plays in the late afternoons. There is also an option to purchasing combo tickets to both shows in the early afternoons. Combo tickets start at $66. Tickets can be purchased at beyondvangogh.com/san-diego/.