VANCOUVER -- To the untrained eye, the objects on display at Oakridge Centre look like paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. In reality, they’re extremely high resolution copies.

John Blogg, one of the exhibition’s guides, describes them not as art, but reflections of paintings by the great Dutch artist.

“How many people have a poster on the wall?” he said. “Do they call it art? No, they love the picture.”

The nine copies of famous Van Gogh works such as Sunflowers and The Bedroom are made out of silicone mounted on canvas. Each limited edition copy cost $10,000 to make. They are for sale for $40,000 each, with profits going to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Produced through a process called reliefography developed by Fujifilm Belgium and the Van Gogh Museum, the copies are part of a limited and numbered series. Each copy comes with anti-counterfeit protection and an official certificate of authenticity from the Van Gogh Museum.

Blogg said when the Van Gogh Museum first announced that high resolution copies would be made of original paintings, it provoked a strong reaction in the art world.

But the critics were largely silenced by quotes and ideas from Van Gogh himself.

Blogg said like many artists in the 19th century, Van Gogh was impressed with photography, which was then a new mechanical way to make images of the world. In 1882, he wrote a letter to his brother Theo saying he would like to see prints made of his works so they could be made available to more people.

The brochure for the exhibition quotes from one of Van Gogh’s letters: “What I wrote to you in my last letter about a plan for making prints for the people is something to which I hope you’ll give some thought one day. I don’t have a fixed plan about this myself as yet.”

He went on to say he didn’t doubt that “people can be found whose heart would be in it. In short, I believe it could be done in such a way that no one would regret having taken part.”

Blogg said, “That shut up everybody. We’re just doing what he wanted us to do.”

Blogg is managing director of Retail is Detail, a retail and pop-up consultancy company based in Amsterdam. It designed the black rectangular exhibition area in the west galleria at Oakridge. He also guides tours of the show, which take place three times a day. It continues to Sunday, March 27.

Cost to see the reliefographs is $5.

The works are extremely durable, Blogg said. People can touch them and feel the ridges that copy the original gestures by Van Gogh. If one of the copies gets dirty, it can be washed down with soap, he said.

He estimated that because of the difficulty in getting the colours exactly right, as much as 35 per cent of the colours are corrected by hand.

“People find it fascinating that they’re able to touch it,” he said. “ We do tours for the blind as well.”

The exhibit was recently seen by 10,472 people in Edmonton. After the summer, it will go to Ottawa and Quebec.

Van Gogh died in 1880 having sold only one painting in his lifetime. Now he’s considered one of the world’s favourite artists and his paintings sell for millions of dollars at auctions.

“He resonates with normal people,” Blogg said. “His life is full of failures and disasters. We understand that.”

kevingriffin@postmedia.com