Centre
Artist Talk: Marco Brambilla in conversation with Phoebe Greenberg
October 4, 2022
Exploring synthetic frontiers of utopia
Contemporary Art
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
Centre
Artist Talk: Marco Brambilla in conversation with Phoebe Greenberg
October 4, 2022
Exploring synthetic frontiers of utopia
Contemporary Art
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
Free
Centre
Chromatic Myriad
August 15 → July 31
The PHI Centre showcases a light installation with evolving content, adapting to the seasons and exhibitions
Installation
Technology
Off-Site Location
The Horizon of Khufu
February 16 → September 1
The immersive experience Horizon of Khufu, presented in the Old Port, is a unique VR expedition to discover the wonders of Egypt
Immersion
Free
Centre
Embodied Spaces
February 24 → December 31
A monthly gathering of live performances where art comes to life
Performance
Community
Centre
Habitat Sonore: Listening room
May 1 → August 11
Tune out outside noise and immerse yourself in one of Montreal's only spatial audio listening rooms. The artists: Daft Punk, Gayance, Daniel Bélanger, Karkwa, and more
Experience
Music
Free
Foundation
Devotional Collection in Montréal
May 3 → September 8
This drop-in activity invites the public to share names of BIPOC women who have contributed and contribute to the music scene locally and nationally, and to share anecdotes, testimonies and recollections of their importance in music history
Event
Contemporary Art
Free
Foundation
Sonia Boyce: FEELING HER WAY
May 3 → September 8
The PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art is pleased to present the North American premiere of FEELING HER WAY by Sonia Boyce DBE RA
Exhibition
Contemporary Art
Free
Foundation
Rajni Perera and Marigold Santos: Efflorescence/The Way We Wake
May 3 → September 8
The PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art is pleased to present Rajni Perera and Marigold Santos: Efflorescence/The Way We Wake, an exhibition featuring recent paintings and sculptures produced by each artist from 2021 to 2024
Exhibition
Contemporary Art
Free
Foundation
Natacha Clitandre: Reflexive Constructions
May 3 → September 8
Reflexive Constructions is a public engagement project by artist Natacha Clitandre taking place in the PHI Foundation’s Education Room, in parallel with the exhibitions Sonia Boyce: FEELING HER WAY and Rajni Perera and Marigold Santos: Efflorescence/The Way We Wake
Installation
Contemporary Art