For all those who are bored of visiting conventional museums, Atelier des Lumières in Paris is a new and modern way to discover art as you if you were literally living it. As you enter the building in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, you are far from imagining what awaits you inside. Through a show of sounds and lights, the Atelier proposes various exhibitions throughout the year, depicting masterpieces of famous artists, past and present. The exhibition is divided into parts, each lasting for about 10 minutes and makes each painting come to life. You are taken straight into the décor that is displayed everywhere on the walls, roof and even the floor of the gigantic hall where people can just roam around as they please or simply sit to feel the magical moment.
As we visited the Atelier des Lumières, the highlight of the exhibition was “Journeys around the Mediterranean”. An exhibition presenting visitors with an itinerary that spanned the period between impressionism and modernism. The digital exhibition highlighted the link between artistic creativity and the Mediterranean shores as the principal centres of the modernist movement. The exhibition immersed visitors in the masterpieces of twenty artists, including Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Matisse, Signac, Derain, Vlaminck, Dufy, and Chagall, amongst others.
In the 1880s, the Mediterranean attracted many artists who had abandoned Paris and the northern regions and flocked to the southern shores, between the cities of Collioure and Saint-Tropez. It was at this point that they developed a new approach to the representation of light and colour. All these artists had links with the Mediterranean, either through their origins or via their stays in the Midi.
More than 500 works, which are now held in collections around the globe, were presented. This visual and musical creation by Gianfranco Iannuzzi, Massimiliano Siccardi and Renato Gatto, produced by Culturespaces, covered the floors and walls to a height of 10 metres. Filling the entire space, the works come to life, and emerge line by line, creating the illusion of a mirror of the sea and the dazzling sun.
The Atelier des Lumières is the first digital art centre in Paris, established in a fully restored former nineteenth-century foundry and opened up in April 2018. The Atelier des Lumières also offers visits to Le Studio, where the work of several contemporary digital artists is displayed.
