Step inside Van Gogh

Walk into Van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles as part of the Immersive Experience. (David Taffet/Dallas Voice)

Immersive experience at Globe Life Park lets you enjoy the artist in a number of ways

DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com

When Globe Life Field opened, everyone wondered what would Globe Life Park be used for. Minor league baseball? Lacrosse? UTA sports?

How about an interactive, immersive Van Gogh event that culminates in an outstanding virtual reality experience. Very creative use of the space.

So is this a Van Gogh exhibit? No. The Dallas Museum of Art presents a exhibition of Van Gogh canvasses entitled “Van Gogh and the Olive Groves” opening in October.

But this serves as an introduction to the DMA’s presentation — or as a follow-up. Or since it’s just fun, it stands on its own.

The presentation at Globe Life Park opens with museum-quality text that unfolds the history of the artist’s short life. Van Gogh, the printed history portion of this experience reminds us, committed suicide at age 37.

On the wall hang reproductions of Van Gogh paintings, and in rooms are laser projections of the various self-portraits on a 3-D face or the variety of painted sunflowers in a 3-D vase that morphs from one painting to another.

Next are some deconstructed Van Gogh works. Layers of paintings taken apart. And Van Gogh’s room at Arles that you can walk into. Step into a sort of cartoon.

All that before entering the immersive surround-screen animated projections that are the show’s signature. The half-hour experience sets Van Gogh’s paintings into motion.

Take “Starry Night.” The swirling sky and twinkling stars are already in motion on the canvas Van Gogh painted. That’s the genius of the painting. Perhaps no other painting has so much motion in it. Projected with about 20 cameras and set to actual motion, the painting simply does before your eyes what it’s probably always done in your mind.

Three paintings involving a train were painted at the same time with different views of the landscape. Here they’re projected in a line, and the train moves across the three canvasses brilliantly tying them together.

Windmill blades rotate. Sunflowers grow and fly and spin and creep underfoot.

Music adds to the whirlwind of this Van Gogh-inspired cacophony of color and design. And the artist’s words also add to the presentation.

“I put my heart and soul into my work, and I lost my mind in the process,” Van Gogh said.

He also gives the advice that if anyone has told you that you couldn’t paint, just paint some more.

The next section of the experience is coloring your own Van Gogh. I did mine — I colored “Starry Night” — with dots and dashes in crayon, then scanned it into the exhibit and saw it projected on the wall. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t draw, and don’t skip the coloring section. It’s not just for kids.

The final piece of the experience was the most unexpected — a virtual reality tour that begins in the bedroom in Arles and ends crashing through a painting into a sea of stars. As you slide down the stairs from the bedroom and out the door, you’ll hold onto the arm of your chair so you don’t fall. Windmills and fields of sunflowers await outside.

The view is 360 degrees, and, at some points, I wasn’t sure if the ground was moving beneath my feet.

The 12-minute VR experience was amazing. Be sure to look behind you and above you. Rub your feet across the floor to check if you’re actually standing still. You decide if you’re moving down the cobblestone streets or if you’re still just sitting in your seat.

Get the perspective of what Van Gogh was painting in 3D, and get another clue into how he created his amazing canvases.

In the immersive room, the stars are swirling. In the VR experience, you are.

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience is at Globe Life Park, 1090 Ballpark Way, Arlington. Park across the street in Lot K.

Tickets are on sale through November with no definite closing date announced. Tickets are $34.90 for adults and $19.90 for children. Open weekdays 10 a.m.-8 p.m. and holidays and weekends 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.