Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit Debuts In Denver In September But Tickets Already Selling Fast

DENVER (CBS4)- An art exhibit unlike any other is coming to Denver later this year, but pre-sale tickets are already selling fast. Immersive Van Gogh debuts in the Mile High City in September, allowing visitors to lose themselves in monumental projections animating Vincent van Gogh's works of art.

"It's a completely new way of experiencing art," Corey Ross, co-producer of Immersive Van Gogh, said. "When I first went to Paris and saw this work, I was just blown away. The installation in Paris was created by the same guy who's creating the installation in Denver, Massimiliano Siccardi. He's more or less the Steven Spielberg of these immersive art installations. We're really excited to be bringing it to America for the first time."

Ross explained the exhibit is massive -- about 500,000 cubic feet of van Gogh's creations projected onto the gallery's floors, walls, ceilings and archways.

"Everything becomes part of the installation," he said. "A column suddenly comes to life with sunflowers and clouds. You're seeing van Gogh's projections on a size you've never seen before. A piece of work that might be 2 feet x 4 feet is suddenly 50 feet high. But it's so much more than that."

Combining his own artistic perspective to van Gogh, Massimiliano Siccardi brings the paintings to life. Sunflowers sway in the breeze, clouds pass overhead, and the stars in "Starry Night" twinkle, Ross told CBSN Denver anchor Kelly Werthmann.

"It's almost a visual equivalent of a DJ," he said. "A DJ will sample from one song and another song and bring them together and make a new piece of music. That's what Massimiliano is doing with the art. We've licensed over 400 images of the great Vincent van Gogh paintings from the biggest museums around the world. [Massimiliano] has taken that as raw material, he deconstructs them, he animates them, and reconstructs them."

The immersive experience is also choreographed to a soundtrack created by Italian composer Luca Longobardi.

"In my opinion, coming out of this period of time where we've been in isolation and not being able to experience anything," Ross said, "to go and experience something completely fresh and new that you've never experienced before -- we all deserve it."

As for where visitors can experience this unique installation, that's TBA.

"That's part of our mystery and part of the artistic process," Ross said.

The venue will be announced closer to the exhibit's debut on Sept. 30. Even still, pre-sale tickets are available now. Ross said Denver has the highest ticket sales per capita of any of the other 15 cities where Immersive Van Gogh is running -- including Los Angeles and Chicago. The hope is even more people will take the opportunity to experience van Gogh's work in a new and unforgettable way.

"It's really quite emotional and moving, and it's the chance to see a new artistic medium," Ross said. "You don't have to have any special artistic knowledge of van Gogh to enjoy this. We have a running already in Toronto, Chicago and San Francisco and people are just blown away by it."

For more details and to purchase presale tickets, visit Denver Van Gogh.