Art, tech merge at ‘Inside Magritte’ in Seoul

More than 100 artworks by Rene Magritte, reproduced with digital technologies, offer an immersive experience that maximizes interaction with the master’s artworks.

The exhibition “Inside Magritte,” which runs until Sept. 13 at the Insa Central Museum in Insadong, central Seoul, provides a multisensory learning experience that uses music, light, virtual reality techniques and video art to bring the artist and his works to life.

Directed by The Fake Factory, based in Florence, Italy, the exhibition traveled from Milan to Florence for two years, gaining popularity for its creative way of combining art with technology.

A total of 160 of Magritte’s works, including oil paintings, documentaries and photographs, are presented through diverse technologies that make viewers feel as if they have stepped inside the pieces.

The exhibition is divided into four themes: “About Rene Magritte,” “Play Rene Magritte,” “Magritte and Cinema,” “Inside Magritte” and “Magritte’s Surrealism.” Upon entering the “Inside Magritte” section, visitors will be surrounded with Magritte paintings on all sides for 360 degrees.

Born in 1898, Rene Francois Ghislain Magritte was a Belgian surrealist painter who greatly influenced global art trends. Magritte’s artistic philosophy is best embodied in his famous statement “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.”

His iconic painting “The Treachery of Images (This Is Not a Pipe)” shocked people in 1929 by looking at the complicated relationship between the verbal and the visual. The artist enjoyed putting ordinary objects in unusual contexts to provoke questions about perceptions of reality.

By Park Yuna (yunapark@heraldcorp.com)