Zdzisław Beksiński's Mind-Bending Paintings Now in Stunning Virtual Reality
The creations of Zdzisław Beksiński are valued by fans around the world for their fascinating and unsettling atmospheres and their surrealistic scenery straight from the borderland between wakefulness and dreams. Created by the Polish studio 11th Dimension, ‘De Profundis’ allows you to infiltrate the world of the artist’s most famous paintings thanks to virtual reality (VR) technology.
The prototype version of the De Profundis project was presented to the wider public in 2015 during the exhibition Beksiński Jakiego Nie Znamy (The Beksiński We Don’t Know) in Mościce Arts Centre in Tarnów, co-organised by the Beksiński Foundation. During the opening and closing exhibitions, the virtual installation was experienced by almost 500 visitors. Today, you can view the project as part of the exhibition Beksiński: Od Fotografii do Wirtualnej Rzeczywistości (Beksiński: From Photograpy to Virtual Reality) in the Praga Koneser Center in Warsaw.
The premise of the experience is about giving art lovers access to a new form of artistic dialogue. Unlike traditional forms of Beksiński's work, VR enriches impressions through the use of sounds and enlivens the internal world of the painting by making it responsive to the viewer's actions. Most of all, it allows personal journeys through a painting’s space, by separating the viewer from external distractions.
Jakub Ruszała, founder of the studio 11th Dimension, said:
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An essential element of the project’s realisation was determining the limits of widening the painting’s interpretation. During this process, it was vital to fill out the original paintings’ unseen spaces, those that surround the viewer. You can interpret Beksiński’s paintings in a very personal way.
Embeded gallery style
display gallery as slider
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The artist himself didn’t name his works, nor throw any light on their meanings. While we worked on the project, I tried to leave viewers with that same sense of the unsaid and room for their own subjective interpretation, just like Zdzisław Beksiński did.
The De Profundis project is the world's first in-depth use of VR technology to present traditional painting. Ruszała summed up:
Source: promotional materials
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I believe that the greatest benefit coming from the project is how it makes available a completely new form of interaction with art, which thanks to its immersiveness has a chance of encouraging young people to become familiar with works by outstanding Polish artists like Beksiński.
Edited and translated by AZ, Aug 2015