Beyond the Frame: Impressions of California (virtual exhibition)
Created by
Imaginary Places
Experience online
through September 12, 2025
Experience online through September 12, 2025
beyondtheframe.imca.uci.edu
Beyond the Frame: Impressions of California
An Immersive Experience of Landscape Painting from the Langson IMCA Collection
With an aim to make its collection more accessible to audiences, Langson IMCA commissioned design studio Imaginary Places to create a digital installation sharing new insights about California Impressionism. The resulting “work-of-works” is a curated online experience featuring 28 paintings by 25 artists that tells varied stories of the depicted landscapes bridging the 19th century to present day. Set in a stylized digital landscape, images of the selected works are clustered into virtual galleries that pass from dawn to night. In addition to high resolution digital images, the installation provides biographical information on each artist and contextual material about the works, including archival sound files and literary texts. Guided by their own curiosity, viewers are invited to reconsider their initial impression of the paintings—what they see and do not see—by looking beyond the frame.
Imaginary Places partners include Juan Diaz Bohorquez, a Berlin-based filmmaker and designer; Sherry Huss, an entrepreneurial community builder in Northern California; Itamar Kubovy, a culture and live events producer in New York City; Stefanie Sobelle, a Brooklyn-based critic, editor, writer, professor, and dramaturg originally from Los Angeles; and Josef Szuecs, a maker, coder, programmer, engineer, and musician in Northern California.