World’s Most-Visited Immersive Art Show Opens in Rio

Rio de Janeiro · Culture

A new immersive exhibition pairing the painter Gustav Klimt and the architect Antoni Gaudí has opened in Rio, the same projection show that five million people have already seen worldwide.

Rio has just landed one of the world’s most successful art experiences. A show that turns the work of two European masters into a wall-to-wall spectacle of light and sound opened in the city on June 10.

It is the kind of attraction that has filled venues from Paris to New York. Now it has reached the beachfront district of Barra da Tijuca, in Rio’s western zone.

What the immersive exhibition actually is

Rather than hanging paintings on a wall, the show projects them, vastly enlarged, across every surface of a darkened hall. Visitors stand inside the images as they move and dissolve.

The space runs to fifteen hundred square metres, with images thrown onto walls seven metres high. The effect is meant to feel less like looking at art and more like walking through it.

There is a build-up before the main hall, too. A series of staged rooms leads visitors through a recreation of light falling through the stained glass of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família church.

The organisers promise the same projection films shown at the Atelier des Lumières in Paris, widely seen as the benchmark for the form. The Rio run is staged by a Brazilian producer with the French studio behind it.

Two unlikely partners

The pairing is the show’s clever twist. Gustav Klimt was the Austrian painter of shimmering gold, sensual portraits and decorative pattern at the turn of the twentieth century.

Antoni Gaudí was the Catalan architect of curving, organic buildings, most famously the still-unfinished Sagrada Família. Both bent the rules of their crafts toward something dreamlike.

Seen together on a moving wall, their shared love of ornament and nature is the point. The curators describe a journey between two cities, Vienna and Barcelona, and two restless imaginations.

Why the timing matters

The Rio opening is not an accident of the calendar. This year marks a century since the architect died, an anniversary the cultural world has labelled the Gaudí Year

The centrepiece of those celebrations is in Barcelona itself. After more than 144 years of construction, the Sagrada Família is completing its central Tower of Jesus Christ, finally crowning the basilica.

That global moment gives the Rio show a timely backdrop. It places the city, for a season, inside a worldwide conversation about one of architecture’s great visionaries.

The format has become one of the defining cultural products of the past decade. Cities around the world now host these walk-through projection shows, and they draw crowds that traditional galleries can struggle to match.

Rio’s arrival on that circuit is itself a small statement. It signals that the city is now a regular stop for the kind of touring spectacle that once skipped Latin America altogether.

The producer behind the Rio run is the same outfit that brought a hugely popular Van Gogh projection show to Brazilian audiences. That track record helps explain the confidence behind a venue of this size.

A note for visitors

For a foreign visitor, the appeal is partly that nothing is lost in translation. The experience is visual and musical, with no need to read Portuguese wall texts to follow it.

It also sits a little off the usual tourist track, in Barra rather than the postcard south zone. That makes it a reason to see a different, more modern face of the city.

Tickets are on sale through the venue and an online partner. With evenings cool in Rio’s winter, an indoor spectacle of light is an easy way to spend one.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Klimt and Gaudí immersive exhibition?

It is a large-scale projection show that displays the work of painter Gustav Klimt and architect Antoni Gaudí across the walls and floor of a darkened hall. Visitors stand inside the moving images rather than viewing framed pictures.

Where and when can I see it in Rio?

It opened on June 10 at Rio Design Barra, in the Barra da Tijuca district in the city’s western zone. Tickets are sold through the venue and an online ticketing partner.

Why is it happening in 2026?

The year marks 100 years since the death of Antoni Gaudí, celebrated worldwide as the “Gaudí Year.” In Barcelona, the Sagrada Família is completing its central tower after more than 144 years of work.