Marco Brambilla at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)
The superlatives “genius” and “masterpiece” are sometimes utilized overzealously—so we received’t use them right here. But these qualities suffuse movie director and artist Marco Brambilla’s video set up, Heaven’s Gate, 2021, a stunning achievement that redefines visible splendor. Introduced on a vertical, rectangular display screen in a darkish room, the imagery includes a mind-blowing amount of film scenes, units, and characters which were digitally cropped and recontextualized into contiguous animated dreamscapes. Multilayered moments from a few of cinema’s most iconic productions—Metropolis (1927), Rocky (1976), Jurassic Park (1993), King Kong (particularly, the 1976 and 2005 remakes)—repeat regularly, producing an epic celluloid tapestry. The astounding compositional element, symmetry, and a thunderous orchestral soundtrack compound the work’s grandiose, hypnotic impact.
We witness an odyssey of grassy Edens, undersea realms, and volcanic hells whereas well-known faces, props, and phases are spliced into acquainted but surreal environments, corresponding to a dancing Christopher Walken taking part in Frank White in King of New York (1990); the villainous ascent of Charlize Theron as witch-queen Ravenna from Snow White and the Hunstman (2012); and Chris Tucker, in a celestial vista of clouds and fireworks, because the maniacal radio host Ruby Rhod in The Fifth Component (1997). Edits upon edits of endless depth—filled with parades, heroes, monsters, and smiling troupes in blazing shade—distill the movie trade’s seductive excesses.
However Brambilla’s glittering facade additionally reveals the soulless lies, stereotypes, and unattainable perfections that Hollywood peddles. All of the sudden, the vignettes appear off-kilter, as if we’re watching the undead facsimiles of myriad stars and starlets, indifferent from their viewers. The headliners are performing just for themselves, their dramatic gestures and mouthed phrases merely empty Stepford-style proselytizing of unreachable beliefs. Maybe in relation to skewering the cynical propaganda and deceit of Tinseltown’s greasy fantasy machine, there could be no deadlier murderer than considered one of its personal.
— Darren Jones
