London seems to be, well, immersed in immersive art right now. From multi-sensory exhibitions animating the work of Frida Kahlo and Gustav Klimt to numerous Van Gogh ‘experiences’, the city is awash with retina-battering, virtual-reality art. What you think of these shows will probably depend on whether you’ve managed to catch one of the better, thought-provoking exhibits or one that makes you wonder why you didn’t just go to the National Gallery to see it for free instead.
But, unlike many of the new slew of immersive exhibitions, the newly founded immersive art gallery Frameless is not temporary. It’s a permanent gallery dedicated to the art of submersion. Having taken over the old Odeon at Marble Arch in late 2022, the former subterranean cinema rooms have been converted into four multi-sensory galleries featuring iconic masterpieces from the greatest artists of our time. Well, sort of. As its name suggests you won’t find any physical paintings here. Rather each of the rooms across the 30,000 sq foot site contains a mini show where some of the most famous and recognisable art in the world are stripped down to their base colours and then reconstructed in dazzling 3D animations that dance across mirrored ceilings and swirl across the floors and walls, all set to rousing soundtracks.
The big hitter is ‘The World Around Us’ gallery dedicated to iconic landscape paintings, which the top-notch projectors turn into something that’s genuinely jaw-dropping. In fact, I hear multiple people gasp as they walk through the doors straight into the middle of lava flows oozing down the walls and floors as Joseph Wright of Derby’s 1774 ’Vesuvius in Eruption’ painting is given the techy treatment. Then we’re whisked into the middle of a heaving sea with thunderclaps and trembling strings playing as huge projections of the ship crashing on the waves of Rembrandt’s ‘Christ in the Storm on the Lake of Galilee’ rear up the walls.
Though less striking, the other rooms offer thoughtful, interesting and sometimes witty interpretations of art history’s greatest hits. An animated short film-style display of Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ really highlights its comedic, surreal elements and leaves me chuckling in a way I probably wouldn’t be if I was looking at it in the Museo del Prado. Projections of abstract works from the likes of Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky make you really appreciate their craftsmanship as the colourful shapes dance across a maze of angled screens in ‘The Art of Abstraction’ room. While the ‘Colour in Motion’ room, where the floor is peppered with piles of colourful dots that react to your movements, is a real hit with kids and Instagrammers as small hands push swirls of dots and brushstrokes up the walls which transform piece by piece into Monet’s ‘The Waterlily Pond’.
If you’re staunchly of the opinion these great works of art should be appreciated in their original form then Frameless’s reinterpretations probably won’t be for you. But, I found these trippy graphics made me see great pieces of art in a whole new light and watching them being broken down into individual colours and brush strokes only accentuates the artists’ pioneering ingenuity that lots of us have come to take for granted. Immersive art is certainly divisive, but Frameless has managed to create something genuinely exciting.
