King’s Cross’s swanky immersive film theatre the Lightroom launched in 2023 with a splashy exhibition entitled David Hockney: Bigger & Closer. Although the show has remained in the repertoire over the last few years, Lightbox has proven to be much more than just a glorified version of one of those iffy projected art pop-ups. It has steered clear of further shows based on the works of major visual artists, with a pleasingly wayward repertoire of original immersive films (which are projected on the floor and walls of the space at massive scale) that have run the gamut from Tom Hanks to dinosaurs to Coldplay to Wallace and Gromit.
After four years, though, Lightroom has earned the right to do another big art show, and it’s a really big one. While was a collaboration with Hockney prior to his passing, a film based around the works of the great Henri Matisse. For it, the team have regrouped to take us on a journey through his dazzling – and, yes, joyous – 60-year career, running from such paintings as ‘Joy of Life’ The Dance’ to his iconic cut-outs, to the Matisse Chapel in Vence.
It can be a little unclear what you’re literally getting with a Lightroom show until you actually see it but in a nutshell it looks like the vibe is a wide-ranging array of Matisse’s works, blown up to gigantic size on the Lightroom’s huge digital projectors, accompanied by a voiceover drawn from Matisse’s own writings: diaries, letters, notebooks and journals. The show is made in consultation with art historian Ann Dumas MBE who has curated exhibitions for the Royal Academy of Arts and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Matisse’s art will also be accompanied by works and reflections from Nigerian-British artist Yinka Ilori, whose colourful oeuvre is heavily influenced by Matisse. Ilori’s thoughts on what Matisse means to him should be thoroughly illuminating.
Whatever the case, the Lightroom offers about as premium an example of This Sort Of Thing as you’re ever going to get – it’s not going to be slop – and in the absence of any major Matisse exhibition on the horizon any time soon, it’s well worth a look for anyone fancying a hit of pure joy.
will join the Lightroom’s repertoire from Jan 27, 2027, with tickets on sale now.
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