HAMILTON, ON.- Blending abstraction, figuration, photography and video, are you experienced?, on view at the Art Gallery of Hamilton features the contemporary art of Nadia Belerique (Toronto), Jessica Eaton (Montreal), Olafur Eliasson (Berlin, Danish-Icelandic), Dorian FitzGerald (Toronto), Hadley+Maxwell (Berlin, Canadian) and famed Korean artist Do Ho Suh. Spread out over 8,000 sq. feet of exhibition space this groundbreaking exhibition is accessible, often familiar, and sometimes boldly outrageous.

Shape changing videos. Hanging sculptures lit by psychedelic lights. The AGH is breaking with museum tradition and is encouraging visitors to take selfies in the gallery space. These are works that will engage audiences, young and old alike, on several levels.

The show title is based on a famous Jimi Hendrix song. And while in that Hippy Era classic song Jimi tells us to hold hands and “watch the sun rise from the bottom of the sea”, at the AGH exhibition, visitors are told to be open-minded about how they interpret what they see intellectually, emotionally, and physically.

“are you experienced? is the largest contemporary art show we’ve done at the AGH in over a decade,” said Melissa Bennett, AGH Curator of Contemporary Art and curator of the exhibition. “Culled from the world’s leading artists, the works are extraordinary for the ways in which they can move visitors emotionally. Walk through the gallery spaces to see yourself seeing. The artists strive to create subconscious reactions to their materials and ideas.”

Many of the pieces on display in the exhibition are very large; one of the canvases is even hung on an angle to fit inside the exhibit space. Artist Dorian FitzGerald’s Hacker-Pschorr Beerhall, Oktoberfest, Munich fills the wall of one large gallery within the show. Seen from the entrance, the Toronto-based artist’s massive painting appears to be hyper-realistic. But stepping into the space, the Beerhall’s interior quickly blurs into abstraction, becoming a wall of splashes of paint.

Korean artist Do Ho Suh is famously nomadic. He currently lives and works in London, New York, and Seoul. Since the mid-1990s Suh has questioned the conventional notion of personal space. He explores the variable dimension and mobility of this idea in both its physical and metaphorical manifestations. When the public enters are you experienced?, they will see elements of Suh’s full-scale “homes” of semitransparent cloth, including his apartment in New York.

The UK’s Guardian newspaper calls 37-year old Regina-born Jessica Eaton the “hottest photographic artist to come out of Canada.” In Hamilton a photographic series of largerthan-life geometric cubes will be on show. This work is “a dramatically beautiful response to the ongoing debate about photography's meaning in our age of relentless digital distraction.”

Last spring the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto awarded Canadian artist Nadia Belerique with the BMW Exhibition Prize for Have You Seen This Man?, a photography-based installation show at Daniel Faria Gallery. The Toronto Star called it a mysterious and unstable show, giving gallery goers a sense “of impending doom.” Now in 2015 the Toronto artist is back with a companion exhibition. I Hate You Don’t Leave Me premières in Hamilton and investigates how the photograph is both the object of the observer and the observed!

“It is not just about decorating the world… but about taking responsibility,” Olafur Eliasson said of his art in a popular TED Talk video. The artist uses natural elements (like light, water, fog) and makeshift technical devices to transform museum galleries and public areas into immersive environments. In Hamilton his Triple Ripple installation consists of mechanical mechanisms producing complex visual effects. Light projects onto disks that will spin around the gallery.

Canadian, but currently Berlin-based, Hadley+Maxwell are two artists who have jointly exhibited their work in cities all over the world, including Amsterdam, Taipei, Seattle, and Rotterdam. They are currently in Ontario completing an outdoor installation in Toronto’s Harbourfront district. In are you experienced? visitors will get a sensory bombardment response to the question from Hadley+Maxwell. Video. Sculpture. Lights. The Hamilton exhibit might be best described as a Phantasmagorical Be In!