Park Han-sol reports on Korea's financial regulators, along with fintech and insurance. She previously wrote about the art world, from biennales and exhibitions to fairs and auctions, with a focus on Seoul and the figures shaping the scene. Before joining The Korea Times, she spent a year at ABC News' Seoul bureau, contributing to coverage of major Asia-Pacific events.
Salvador Dali's dreamlike art illuminates Seoul's once-forgotten luxury hotel cabaret
Installation view of the immersive multimedia exhibition, “Dali: The Endless Enigma,” at the Theatre des Lumieres at Grand Walkerhill Seoul ⓒ Salvador Dali, Fundacion Gala-Salvador Dali, c/o SACK 2023 / Courtesy of Tmonet
By Park Han-sol
By Park Han-sol
On the towering walls inside of a former luxury cabaret at Grand Walkerhill Seoul, Salvador Dali's (1904-89) melting clocks, swarming eyeballs and elephants with spindly legs emerge from the darkness.
The floor-to-ceiling digital projection of the Surrealist icon's dreamlike art is what reanimates the hotel's underground Walkerhill Theater, which was established in 1963 as the country's first commercial performance venue before fading into history half a century later.
Reborn as the “Theatre des Lumieres” last year ― as part of the global immersive art project realized by the French company Culturespaces ― the once-forgotten structure now hosts its second exhibition, “Dali: The Endless Enigma.”
The show follows the success of its predecessor, “Gustav Klimt, Gold in Motion,” which filled the venue with the quintessential shimmering art of the prolific Austrian painter.
Installation view of “Dali: The Endless Enigma” at the Theatre des Lumieres ⓒ Salvador Dali, Fundacion Gala-Salvador Dali, c/o SACK 2023 / Courtesy of Tmonet
Installation view of “Dali: The Endless Enigma” at the Theatre des Lumieres ⓒ Salvador Dali, Fundacion Gala-Salvador Dali, c/o SACK 2023 / Courtesy of Tmonet
“The Endless Enigma” ― organized in collaboration with the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation, a cultural institution founded by Dali himself to promote his oeuvre - packs the 70-year creative evolution of the eclectic Spanish art master into a 35-minute multi-sensory retrospective.
Against the psychedelic music of the English rock band Pink Floyd, the show surrounds visitors with the monumental projections of Dali's tours de force, including “The Persistence of Memory” (1931) and “Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds” (1936), which conjured up some of his most imaginative explorations into the subconscious.
Among the highlights are the animated paintings featuring his techniques of “the paranoiac-critical method,” where he adopted optical illusions like the double image to tap into the non-rational mechanisms of the human mind.
But while such Surrealist feats during the 1920s and '30s remain the most widely recognized stages of Dali's work, the exhibition goes on to underline his continuous artistic search for different mediums, genres and subjects that made him a genius of the 20th century.
“This show on Dali is about an artist, who expressed himself via multiple mediums ― paintings, sculptures, jewels ― with a very grand imagination,” said Bruno Monnier, CEO of Culturespaces, during a recent press preview.
Accordingly, visitors get a chance to bask in the art master's lesser-known forays into jewelry design, photography and film. Also on view are his later return to neoclassicism under the influence of Renaissance masters, as well as his efforts to combine the field of physics with religious mysticism into the distinct style called “Nuclear Mysticism.”
Installation view of "Gaudi, The Architect of the Imaginary” at the Theatre des Lumieres, directed and designed by Cutback and produced by Culturespaces Digital / Courtesy of Tmonet
The exhibition then seamlessly transports the audience to the equally spectacular world of architect Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926) and his striking masterworks of the Sagrada Familia basilica and Park Guell in Barcelona.
“Gaudi was a Spanish icon with boundless imagination and creativity ― much like Dali,” Monnier said as he described the team's decision to present the two creators side by side.
The Theatre des Lumieres is Culturespaces' second digital art center to open its doors in Korea, following the “Bunker des Lumieres” on Jeju Island.
These “Des Lumieres” art centers, located in major cities across the globe like Paris, New York and Amsterdam, all operate under the goal of breathing new life into abandoned or unused facilities with notable histories through immersive art.
Installation view of "Gaudi, The Architect of the Imaginary” at the Theatre des Lumieres, directed and designed by Cutback and produced by Culturespaces Digital / Courtesy of Tmonet
Park Jin-woo, CEO of Tmonet, the Korean operator of the Theatre des Lumieres and partner of Culturespaces, revealed that the company plans to carry out such “artistic refurbishment” in additional locations in the country in the coming years ― including in Sokcho, Gangwon Province, by 2025.
“We are also scheduled to mount a show on a Jeju-based artist at the Bunker des Lumieres this November, followed by a showcase of another internationally acclaimed Korean creator next year,” he added. “We are then looking to collaborate with Culturespaces to be able to display these Korean pieces to their other sites in Paris, New York, etc.”
“The Endless Enigma” runs through March 3, 2024, at the Theatre des Lumieres.