Salvador Dalí already has a house on Passeig de Gràcia

BarcelonaThe case of Salvador Dalí reflects the historical reservations of the authorities when it comes to paying tribute to him with a public space in Barcelona. Since he died in 1989 and until 2021, all attempts to dedicate a street or a square to him remained in the drawer. One of the recurring ideas was to dedicate a space to him around the future La Sagrera station, but it did not materialize. Dalí is not in the nomenclature, but, instead, starting this Wednesday he will have a home on Passeig de Gràcia, specifically at Casa Amatller, which will permanently host a new, updated and expanded version of Cybernetic Dalí, the immersive experience that Layers of Reality and the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation premiered at the Ideal Centre for Digital Arts in 2022. "Four years later it was time to take a step forward," states the founder and director of Layers of Reality, Jordi Sellas.

The new attraction is titled Dalí Cybernetic Boulevard, and 50% of the content is new. The content in the large immersive room and the metaverse are the same, but they have been remastered. The surprises begin as soon as you arrive. In the welcome area, there is a reproduction of the golden astronaut suit that the Empordà-born artist designed in 1958. The tour continues with the Surrealist Dreams room. Here you can see the video installation The Landscape of the Empordà and original objects such as one of the copies of the magazine Nugget, in which in 1957 Dalí published some illustrated predictions for the future, including that of a "dream machine" that was supposed to allow systematic access to dreams, which, for Dalí, was to be a stimulus for the imagination. In the same vein of Dalí's relationship with magazines, there is a copy of the special edition of Vogue dedicated to the artist in 1971. And the tour continues with a space dedicated to jewelry in motion, where you can see digital reproductions of The Royal Heart and The Chalice of Life. "When you see it in its entirety, an absolutely polyhedral, interesting, fun, and also very current and very much our own figure of Dalí appears," says Sellas.

The women of 2045 according to Dalí

One of the attractions of Dalí Boulevard Cibernètic can be found in the original objects: in the third room there is a cane of his and a pair of Eskimo Eclipse glasses, by Courrèges, famous because the Danish model Lotte Tarp wore them in a photograph next to Dalí at the house in Portlligat. For Dalí, fashion was more than clothing, and he saw it as small machines for transcending, as is evident with a reproduction of the haute couture dress Dress for the Year 2045 that he made in collaboration with Christian Dior. According to Dalí, the woman of the future would be a "super-civilized" being who would need moral and spiritual support, represented by a cane.

Another novelty is the projection, unreleased in color, of a performance carried out by Dalí in 1966 at Park Güell with the Harkness Ballet company, one of the actions with which, in addition to breaking the boundaries between the arts, he once again championed Gaudí. In addition to the video, one can see one of the costumes worn by the dance troupe, created by Paco Rabanne, made of plastic and metal rings.

Dalí's interest in science

Before returning to Barcelona Cybernetic Dalí could be seen in cities such as London, Berlin, Copenhagen, Leipzig, Warsaw, Bruges, Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Athens, Thessaloniki, Tel-Aviv and Riyadh. "It has been a resounding success", assures Sellas. The thesis of the projection is how Dalí's work is grafted with his scientific obsessions, such as the strict geometric base of his apparently chaotic paintings, the interest in nuclear and quantum physics, the fourth dimension and DNA. On the other hand, there is a fragment made with the anaglyph technique that can be seen in three dimensions with the characteristic glasses that have one red lens and the other blue. Another surprise of this part is that some paintings are superimposed, such as The Great Masturbator, The Mill. Landscape of Cadaqués and Figure at a Window, over real images of the landscapes of Cadaqués and Cap de Creus that appear there.

The dynamics of the large immersive room are based on transforming Dalí's paintings and bringing them to life. Below, the whole paintings can be seen so that the public does not forget the references. But since Dalí never stopped experimenting, the piece includes a three-minute fragment of images generated by artificial intelligence based on the parameters of Dalí's paintings, the work of the Turkish studio Ouchhh. To avoid confusion, this part is distinguished from the rest.

Unlike previous immersive experiences of Gustav Klimt and Frida Kahlo, in Dalí's there are no architectural elements, such as museums and houses, to frame the works of art, so the images take center stage. As for the metaverse, the public embarks as a group, and turned into an avatar, on a twelve-minute journey through Dalí's dreamlike universe. The crossing is made on board a ship whose cabin is the Galatea Tower and the figurehead is a naked Gala. Not to give too many spoilers, it can be said that the Empordà breads with three crusts appear, ants, a swarm of fireflies, a giant egg inside which you can enter and listen to the artist and a moon that turns into an egg that ends up becoming a sun. The authors of this piece are the studio Univrs.

In the final stretch of the tour is the surrealist boulevard to which the title refers. It is an interactive space where each visitor hand-colors a sheet inspired by Dalí's designs and, upon scanning it, sees a projection of a surrealist walk come to life that merges the Passeig de Gràcia with the landscapes of the Empordà, where the angels from the façade of the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres parade with the costumes that have appeared throughout the exhibition. And, to finish, one can watch television clips of Dalí in a small cinema room.