HEAVEN'S GATE
Heaven's Gate
In Marco Brambilla’s video installation, ‘Heaven’s Gate,’ we levitate through a panoramic landscape of sampled film clips from movies both obscure and familiar collaged into an elaborate digital canvas.
Brambilla was inspired by a 1980 Western of the same title by the American director Michael Cimino that cost approximately $117 million to make but flopped at the box office, thus bankrupting the United Artists film studio and disgracing the director. The reference aims to evoke ideas around the concept of the ‘celebrity dream machine,’ and an individual’s rise and (perhaps inevitable?) fall.
Heaven’s Gate is a video monument to Hollywood’s veneration of glamour while retelling the history of the world in seven distinct phases. Employing spectacle to describe a familiar and universal story, the digitally assembled images generate a hyper-realistic landscape of clouds, meadows and cityscapes, against which humanity oscillates between enlightenment and production. With each cycle and succeeding level of the work, ‘Heaven’s Gate’ engulfs the viewer in a level of density in imagery almost impossible to sustain.
Fragments of the work are shown on 65 colossal screens across the public square and gardens of New York’s Hudson Yards, as well as inside the shops. The full augmented reality (AR) is on exhibit at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). The museum iteration features a totem-like arrangement of screens showing visually disorienting snippets of looping film that traverse through several haunting and surreal landscapes.
In Marco Brambilla’s video installation, ‘Heaven’s Gate,’ we levitate through a panoramic landscape of sampled film clips from movies both obscure and familiar collaged into an elaborate digital canvas.
Brambilla was inspired by a 1980 Western of the same title by the American director Michael Cimino that cost approximately $117 million to make but flopped at the box office, thus bankrupting the United Artists film studio and disgracing the director. The reference aims to evoke ideas around the concept of the ‘celebrity dream machine,’ and an individual’s rise and (perhaps inevitable?) fall.
Fragments of the work are shown on 65 colossal screens across the public square and gardens of New York’s Hudson Yards, as well as inside the shops. The full augmented reality (AR) is on exhibit at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). The museum iteration features a totem-like arrangement of screens showing visually disorienting snippets of looping film that traverse through several haunting and surreal landscapes.
MARCO BRAMBILLA
Please update your browser to access Creative Exchange Agency.