The clocks are melting and the walls have eyes at this immersive Dali exhibit in Miami
Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí’s paintings are crazy enough on their own. An immersive experience in Miami uses your cellphone to make his otherworldly artwork even trippier.
Surreal 360 — A Salvador Dalí Experience is a traveling art show that immerses viewers into the wacky, surreal and mustachioed world of the famous Spanish painter. We know what you’re thinking. Isn’t this like those Van Gogh and Monet experiences where you sit on a floor and watch their paintings projected on wall?
Yes and no. Surreal 360, which has taken over Ice Palace Studios near Overtown, does feature a fully immersive room that morphs Dalí’s signature paintings with blinking eyeballs and a billowing sandstorm. But that’s saved for last. The rest of the show displays over 200 of Dalí’s original artwork and photographs of the artist and his wife and muse Gala.
What stands out about Surreal 360 isn’t the Instagram-worthy projection at the end but its use of augmented reality technology that makes his paintings of flowers melt, elephants trumpet and Jesus Christ on the cross float toward you.
Witnessing Dalí’s works in person is already worth sitting through traffic and fighting for a parking spot. His truly surreal, colorful and sometimes disturbing paintings are fascinating enough on their own, but the augmented reality element makes the experience especially unique and creative.
The first thing to do is use one of the QR codes at the front of the show to download the Surreal 360 app. Inside the exhibit, you’ll see the app’s crying eye logo next to some paintings. Open the app and point the camera at the painting to watch it come a live... albeit in the strangest way possible.
Here’s some of the weird stuff we saw:
The walls have eyes. And the lips are a couch.
After a quick art history lesson in the first room, the second part of the exhibit opens up to a long hallway of Dalí’s increasingly weird drawings and collages, like a charming lobster phone. While visitors look at the artwork, a wall of TVs with big blinking eyeballs watches their every move. It’s like Big Brother, but with melting clocks.
Paintings jump out at you. Literally.
Pro tip: Come to Surreal 360 with a fully charged phone or a portable charger. When you’re not taking a super aesthetic Instagram photo, you’ll be playing around with the Surreal 360 app to see 40 artworks in a new light.
In one drawing, a woman’s umbrella twirls from the page and swings at you. In another, an angel plays a trumpet and startled butterflies scurry away. A pear that looks like a woman’s backside faces you. And (my personal favorite) an egg cracks to reveal a 3D animation of Dalí himself. He does a little dance.
The projection room to end all projection rooms.
Not weirded out yet? Good.
During this 15-minute long immersive sequence, you’ll be surrounded by a ring of fire, the open ocean, funky graphics and a blue fish swimming over a desert. There are a couple couches if you’d like to sit, relax and contemplate reality.
Oh, and there’s a gift shop.
This isn’t a typical art exhibit, but it’s an art exhibit nonetheless. You leave the show, utterly bewildered, and walk straight into the gift shop. Tote bag, anyone?
Surreal 360 — A Salvador Dalí Experience
Tickets: Adult tickets start at $34, children tickets are $20.
Where: Ice Palace Studio West Building, 71 NW 14th St., Miami
Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Closed Mondays.
Info: Open until June 15. Learn more at surreal-360.com.
This story was produced with financial support from The Pérez Family Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
