The Immersive Experience’ at El Paso County Coliseum

Borderland residents can find out what it feels like to seemingly float inside a masterpiece.

“Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience” runs through Jan. 20 at the El Paso County Coliseum, 4100 E. Paisano St. 

The event, which takes about an hour, projects more than 300 of Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh’s masterpieces for viewers to enjoy, said Billye Thompson, event manager for Paquin Entertainment, which is producing the show.  

El Pasoans have welcomed the exhibit, which uses music, moving projections and canvases that rise high above the Coliseum floor to transform the artwork into a multisensory experience.

“Right now we are sold out for the next few weeks of the exhibit, but we are expecting to have a full capacity attendance,” Thompson said.

“People here in El Paso are excited about what we brought here.”

The event is presented by Paquin Entertainment, based out of Winnipeg, Canada, and Normal Studio, out of Montreal.

“They joined together and came up with this idea to put on this immersive experience,” Thompson said.

The showcase was created by French-Canadian creative director Mathieu St-Arnaud and his team at Normal Studio, a news release said.

Participants are greeted at the beginning of the exhibit by a colorful tunnel that leads to the Education Room, which has informative panels on Van Gogh’s life in English and Spanish. Next is the Waterfall Room, with colors flowing down a wall and around the entrance to the Immersive Experience Room, where the high canvas walls come alive with moving projections of the artist’s work as the floor shifts in colors.

Between the moving images on the walls and floors, visitors can experience a sense of floating within masterpieces. Be sure to have someone or something steady to hold on to if you have balance issues because the experience can trick your senses into thinking the floor has given way to platforms of color that are supporting you in midair.

Thompson didn’t know how much the production costs, but said, “it’s a great investment not only in finances, but in people that we bring here to set this all up.”

“We have a production crew that goes from city to city to set it up,” he said. “It takes about six days to come into a city, set it up and have it up and running. And then once the exhibit is over, we have a crew that comes back and tears it all down and we ship all of this equipment to the next city that we are going to.”

A traveling crew consists of 12 to 18 people, he said.

The El Paso show is only one of the company’s productions.

“We have the ‘Beyond Van Gogh’ exhibit, so we’re in multiple cities right now,” Thompson said. “That’s one of three ‘Beyond’ shows, a franchise of Paquin Entertainment. We have ‘Beyond Van Gogh,’ we have ‘Beyond Monet,’ we’ve also just kicked off ‘Beyond Tut’ as well. So, we have several shows that are active right now in multiple, different cities.”

Thompson has advice for the El Pasoans who are joining the millions who have taken part in the immersive art experience.