One of the pioneers of the Surrealist movement, iconic Spanish artist Salvador Dalí and his artworks are set to arrive in the metaverse through a digital art exhibition.
According to Spanish media outlet El Periodico, the digital art exhibition of Dalí will open in Barcelona, Spain on September 20th.
The exhibition is titled “DALÍ CIBERNÈTIC” or “Cyber Dali for the English-speaking public”, and will showcase more than 200 of Dalí’s art works through the metaverse.
The visitors will be able to engage themselves in the paintings by donning virtual reality glasses and entering the metaverse where they will be able to design their own avatars and freely wander around inside the artworks.
The digital interaction with the painter is one of the most realistic aspects given by this show, as the painter uses his voice to lead spectators during the exhibition.
Art lovers will be able to walk through Dalí’ universe’s four spaces, which include the sea, the sky, the void, and the desert, indulging themselves for 15 minutes in his most spectacular works.
The exhibition comprises a ‘metaverse room’, a ‘digital parallel universe’ where people can interact with one another, and an ‘infinite room’, which is an expansive hall in which the floor and all four walls have massive visual displays projected upon them.
Tickets for this one-month-long event are already on sale. After the initial exhibition closes, the international tour will kick off in London from October.
The organizers anticipate being able to deploy the metaverse project in more than 20 cities over the course of a four-year international tour.
Jordi Sellas, executive director of the IDEAL Digital Arts Center of Barcelona, stated that from the first day they founded the Arts Center, their goal was to make an exhibition that would be at the height of the “great Salvador Dalí”.
“From the day we founded the center we set ourselves the goal of organizing an exhibition to live up to the great Salvador Dalí. After almost two years of work we have achieved it, giving shape to what is undoubtedly our most ambitious production so far,” Sellas noted.
This metaverse exhibition initiative is a collaboration of Exhibition Hub, a firm in charge of curating, producing, & distributing major exhibitions worldwide, and Layers of Reality, an audiovisual production firm specializing in creating immersive content.
An Exhibition Hub curators representative, Mario Iacampo, praised the power of such immersive exhibits, saying “digital experiences help people know who the artist was.”
Dalí Foundation museums director Montse Aguer described the event as a “completely different way of viewing Dalí.” The Dalí Foundation has also helped with the exhibition’s creation and design.
Also Read: Camibus: When Surrealism Meets Digital Era.
This isn’t the first endeavor to give the art works of one of the world’s most important artists a digital reality. In February, the Father of Modern Indian Art, Raja Ravi Varma’s famous works were auctioned off as NFTs. The NFT versions of the National Treasures ‘The Coquette’ and ‘The Reclining Nair Lady’ were available during the four-day auction.
