Discussion
Contemporary Art
Artist Talk: Marco Brambilla in conversation with Phoebe Greenberg
October 4, 2022
Exploring synthetic frontiers of utopia
Centre
EXPERIENCE
Marco Brambilla:
Heaven's Gate
- Experience
- Immersion
- Storytelling
Look up to address on google map
PHI Centre
Space B + Space C
315 Saint-Paul St West
Montreal, Quebec, H2Y 2A3
Wednesday:
12 pm to 8 pm
Thursday and Friday:
12 pm to 10 pm
Saturday:
10 am to 10 pm
Sunday:
10 am to 8 pm
Closed on Mondays and Tuesdays
Heaven's Gate is included in the admission price for Pathway 2: Marco Brambilla and Pathway 3: Horizons VR.
Before visiting, please review some essential information about the visit, including details on accessibility at the Centre.
For more details on safety measures in place at the PHI Centre, visit our COVID-19 page.
Two immersive Renaissance tableaux for our hyper-mediated digital era, these artworks by Marco Brambilla will engulf you in landscapes of pop-culture iconography.
Heaven's Gate is a monumental new work by video artist Marco Brambilla. A lavish, satirical, and vertigo-inducing meditation on the Hollywood “Dream Factory,” Heaven's Gate is a work of digital psychedelia employing the same state-of-the-art computer compositing technology as the films it references.
The viewer travels through a vertical landscape of infinitely looping and collaged film samples, led upwards through seven surreal landscapes. The panoramas are arranged vertically into a digital totem, in which the monument of our worship questions human nature's tendency towards consumption and excess. Film characters and fantastical set pieces are transformed into recurring memes, trapped in time as media sculptures removed from their original context, now inhabiting a hyper-sensory parallel universe where the lines between gaming, news, reality TV, and Hollywood are part of the same human epic.
The title Heaven's Gate refers to Michael Cimino's 1980 film, whose excessive production costs bankrupted United Artists and effectively ended the era of director as auteur, paving the way for the studio domination of the medium, which has continued to the present day. The work re-appropriates the language of pop culture to depict the tensions present in religion, industry, and celebrity: ascension and fall, innocence and experience, vanity and pageantry, sexuality and awakening, simplicity and excess.
Employing spectacle to describe the hollowness of spectacle, Heaven's Gate enacts Marshall McLuhan's famous phrase, "the medium is the message." Through this absorbing work, Brambilla highlights the sensory overload of today's compendium of popular culture to engulf the viewer's senses with a hyper-saturation of imagery almost impossible to sustain.
About Marco Brambilla
Marco Brambilla is a video artist based in London. Brambilla’s work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum (New York); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; ARCO Foundation (Madrid); and the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington D.C). Notable shows include New Museum, New York; Santa Monica Museum of Art (Retrospective); Seoul Biennial, Korea; Broad Art Museum; and Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland. Brambilla has worked with Creative Time and Art Production Fund in New York to present public art installations, and is a recipient of the Tiffany Comfort Foundation and Tiffany Colbert Foundation awards. His work has been featured at the Venice Film Festival and Sundance Film Festivals, as well as Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland.
Related Event
Discussion
Contemporary Art
Artist Talk: Marco Brambilla in conversation with Phoebe Greenberg
October 4, 2022
Exploring synthetic frontiers of utopia
Credits
Heaven’s Gate (Triptych)
By Marco Brambilla
8K colour video, with sound
UK, 2021
6min., 20 sec, loopCreated by Marco Brambilla
Produced by Marco Brambilla Studio
Flame Artists: Alisdair Burnett, Duncan Malcolm
After Effects Artist: Pete Fullarton
Producers: Duncan Buxton, Tasha Laranjo
Music: Stefan Smith, Phil Bolland
Heaven’s Gate (VR)
By Marco Brambilla
Virtual reality
UK, 2021
5min., 10secCreated by Marco Brambilla
Produced by Marco Brambilla Studio
Flame Artists: Alisdair Burnett, Duncan Malcolm
After Effects Artist: Pete Fullarton
Producers: Duncan Buxton, Tasha Laranjo
Music: Stefan Smith, Phil BollandVFX Production: Glassworks VFX, London
Sound Production: Factory, London
With the financial support of
Discovery Partner
More Events at PHI
Installation
Public Art
Free
Water Road
November 24 → April 1
The PHI Centre building comes to life with an interactive multimedia installation of a motion-activated river on its four-story windows on Saint-Pierre Street
Experience
Immersion
Horizons VR
June 30 → March 5
A special selection of award-winning VR works that will draw you into four distinct worlds sharing unique and powerful stories
Experience
Immersion
Last minute
November 9 → March 5
An immersive installation taking you through a symbolic journey around the concept of a minute stretched out in time
Art Collection
Contemporary Art
Free
PHI's art collection
December 15 → June 11
An ongoing collection of contemporary artworks, accessible and free at the PHI Centre
Performance
Music
Après-Ski Igloofest
January 20 → February 11
AVALANCHE WARNING! Extreme conditions are expected for the 15th anniversary of Igloofest. Let's meet in the storm
Performance
Music
Sold Out
Milk & Bone
February 16
The electro-pop duo present songs off their third album Chrysalism
Exhibition
Contemporary Art
Coming Soon
Terms of Use
March 9 → July 9
Terms of Use brings together works that explore the impact of technologies on the definition, construction, and (re)framing of individual and collective selves
Performance
Storytelling
Confabulation presents: Accomplices
March 11
Stories of best friends, co-conspirators, and partners in crime