The Exhibition as an Immersive Experience

Over recent years, artists have made use of strategies aimed at creating immersive and all-encompassing experiences that, in most cases, attempt to embrace the spectator in an alternative reality to the everyday one. On numerous occasions, they try to solicit the emotional reactions of the viewer by placing him or her at the centre of the visual spectacle, making him or her an active participant in the artistic process. The exhibition Damien Hirst. Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable can certainly be placed in the vein of this deep-rooted tradition and seems to me to be an interesting case study for an investigation into the characteristics, but also the limits, of such processes.