Marco Brambilla (born 25 September 1960) is an Italian-born Canadian contemporary artist and

film director A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, p ...

, known for re-contextualizations of popular and found imagery, and use of 3D imaging technologies in public installations and video art. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York;

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

, New York; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul; the

Museum of the Moving Image The Museum of the Moving Image is a media museum located in a former building of the historic Astoria Studios (now Kaufman Astoria Studios), in the Astoria neighborhood in Queens, New York City. The museum originally opened in 1988 as the Amer ...

, New York; Metronóm Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Barcelona, Spain and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Career

Style and themes

Pop culture as spectacle

Jumping off from his experience in Hollywood filmmaking, Brambilla's work explores the history and influence of pop culture through the lens of

Guy Debord Guy-Ernest Debord (; ; 28 December 1931 – 30 November 1994) was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, critic of work, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationis ...

's " spectacle," or how images commodify human experiences by oversaturation. In an interview with ''

032c ''032c'' magazine is a bi-annual, English-language contemporary culture magazine that covers art, fashion, and politics. It was founded in 2001 by Joerg Koch and is published in Berlin. History The magazine was founded in Berlin in 2001 by Joerg ...

'', Brambilla discussed how Hollywood film has "largely become an exercise in spectacle," hyper-saturating the media landscape with pop-culture imagery. In doing so, his work comments on "our ability to absorb images, our ability to be distracted, our ability to be entertained - our ability to be confronted with all those things simultaneously." While the theme of pop culture as spectacle is particularly prominent in his ''Megaplex'' series — using scenes, characters and images from films to create elaborate "video collages" — his work broadly deals with "transition, our culture's constant acceleration and emotional connection and disconnection through technology." In this respect, Brambilla satirizes mass media, which "can be interpreted as apocalyptic or Utopian in nature." In a review by ''The Art Newspaper'''s extended reality panel, Eron Rauch describes "Heaven's Gate," one of four artworks from his ''Megaplex'' series, as an example of American maximalism in art, comparing it to "Patrick Nagatani or Andrée Tracey; prestige TV openings; Daniel R. Small’s wry archaeology of the set of Cecil B De Mille's ''The Ten Commandments''; “magic eye” books; California sci-fi cults; Broadway theatre set flats rotated by stagehands during musical numbers; and some manner of collision of 90s animated GIF-laden Tripod pages; and the panoramic fractalling of Jackson Pollock."

Metaverse

The term " metaverse" was coined by

Neal Stephenson Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque. Stephenson's work exp ...

in the book '' Snow Crash'', which constitutes Stephenson's vision of how a virtual reality-based Internet might evolve in the near future, exploring subjects on cryptography,

memetics Memetics is a study of information and culture. While memetics originated as an analogy with Darwinian evolution, digital communication, media, and sociology scholars have also adopted the term "memetics" to describe an established empirical study ...

, and the dawn of the information age. Resembling a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), the Metaverse is populated by user-controlled avatars, as well as system daemons. In late 1996, it was announced that writer-director

Jeffrey Nachmanoff Jeffrey Nachmanoff (born March 9, 1967) is an American screenwriter and director. He wrote the screenplay for the 2004 blockbuster film ''The Day After Tomorrow''. He wrote and directed ''Traitor (film), Traitor'', which was released on August 27 ...

would adapt the novel for The Kennedy/Marshall Company and

Touchstone Pictures Touchstone Pictures, Inc. was an American film production label of Walt Disney Studios, founded and owned by The Walt Disney Company. Feature films released under the Touchstone label were produced and financed by Walt Disney Studios, and featu ...

with Brambilla attached to direct the film. While the film did not get made, Brambilla's interest on the subject continued in his work as an artist. One of Brambilla's earliest works ''Halflife'' is a multi-channel video installation that juxtaposes surveillance footage of video gamers in cyber-cafés playing the popular MMOG Counter-Strike with a live video feed of the game world in which they are playing. Through ''Halflife'', Brambilla conjures Debord's spectacle, Stephenson's metaverse, as well as Jean Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality, exploring not only the "breakdown of the dialectic between reality and virtuality", but also "poignantly lluminatesthe psychology of the individual within shared spaces and our ambivalent relationship to the spectacle." Brambilla has used digital technologies, particularly virtual reality, to explore the concept of the Metaverse. In 2016, he adapted "Creation," one of four artworks from his ''Megaplex'' series, for virtual reality, which he described as "more of an experience medium; more about spectatorship and putting you in an environment you wouldn't necessarily be comfortable being put in ... its very much in synch with the way we communicate culturally through social media, through the immersiveness of our connected world. Although it's not a visual thing, it's an emotional thing. We feel more connected in more places, able to experience more points of view, tastes, friendships, more of everything. And VR is everything all the time. You put on the visor and you're literally inside an interface that can be used for anything. Brambilla also adapted "Heaven's Gate" for virtual reality, which first screened at the Pérez Art Museum Miami in November 2021 using twenty

virtual reality headset A virtual reality headset (or VR headset) is a head-mounted device that provides virtual reality for the wearer. VR headsets are widely used with VR video games but they are also used in other applications, including simulators and trainers. VR ...

s, allowing a large group to experience the work simultaneously. Brambilla has compared today's conception of the Metaverse with the Dada movement of the early twentieth century in terms of disrupting traditional modes of thinking. "Today, an entire generation of artists and collectors arguably spend more time in the digital realm than the physical," he said in an interview wit
SuperRare
"This speaks directly to how we interact and engage with every kind of visual. Dada was all about the ephemeral and today some of us are living in an entirely ephemeral state – the Metaverse." Similarly, in 2021, Brambilla curated a collection of nine non-fungible tokens by Simon Denny,

Rachel Rossin Rachel Rossin (born 1987, West Palm Beach, Florida) is a multi-media and installation artist based in New York City. Personal life When Rossin was 16, her mother brought her to the Whitney Museum of American Art where she was attracted to Kiki ...

and

Willem de Rooij Willem de Rooij (born 1969 in Beverwijk, Netherlands) is an artist and educator working in a variety of media, including film and installation. He investigates the production, contextualization and interpretation of images. Appropriations and collab ...

inspired by

exquisite corpse Exquisite corpse (from the original French term ', literally exquisite cadaver), is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. ...

— a collaborative art-making technique developed by the

surrealists Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

. For the project, De Rooij's artistic practice "disrupted" Brambilla, Denny, and Rossin's thought process as more digital "native" artists, resulting in a collection that combines sculpture, virtual reality, and blockchain technology.

Artwork

''Megaplex'' series

Brambilla's ''Megaplex'' is his first series of virtual reality artworks, set between the birth and death of the universe and all that pop culture created during its existence. Each piece explores with the idea of hyper-saturation in media and film as a spectacle. In May 2011, Brambilla's ''Megaplex'' series was part of his first major retrospective at the

Santa Monica Museum of Art The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA), formerly known as the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA), is a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles, CA. As an independent and non-collecting art museum (or kunsthalle), it exhibits the ...

, featuring eight other works produced since 1999.

= Civilization (2008)

= Civilization (2008) depicts hundreds of characters and scenes sampled from Hollywood cinema, populating a vertical scroll depicting an endlessly ascending journey from hell to heaven. This religious-themed tableau contains three distinct visual environments offering a pop-culture reinvention of the volcanic landscape of Hades and the lofty clouds of Heaven. ''Civilization'' was presented at Toronto International Film Festival and the

Fondation Beyeler The Beyeler Foundation or Fondation Beyeler with its museum in Riehen, near Basel ( Switzerland), owns and oversees the art collection of Hildy and Ernst Beyeler, which features modern and traditional art. The Beyeler Foundation museum includes a ...

in Basel, Switzerland. It was a permanent installation at

The Standard The Standard may refer to: Entertainment * The Standard (band), an indie rock band from Portland, Oregon * ''The Standard'' (novel), a 1934 novel by the Austrian writer Alexander Lernet-Holenia * ''The Standard'' (Tommy Flanagan album), 1980 * ...

in New York City until 2021 when it was replaced with ''Heaven's Gate,'' the latest of Brambilla's ''Megaplex'' series.

= Evolution (2010)

= Evolution illustrates the history of humankind in a vast side-scrolling video mural depicting the spectacle of human conflict across time through the lens of cinema. ''Evolution'' was part of the "Official Selection" at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in 2011 and the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

in 2012.

= Creation (2012)

= Set between the birth and death of the universe, Creation presents an abstract cycle of life, depicted within spiraling DNA strands in the form of a cosmic pull back. The big bang is followed by embryonic inception, an idyllic Garden of Eden, then decadent urban sprawls eventually giving way to a landscape of annihilation before reconstituting itself as the spiral loops back to the moment of origin. ''Creation'' was presented at

in 2015, SITE in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as well as inside

St. Patrick's Old Cathedral The Basilica of Saint Patrick's Old Cathedral, sometimes shortened to St. Patrick's Old Cathedral or simply Old St. Patrick's, is a Catholic parish church, basilica, and the former cathedral of the Archdiocese of New York, located in the Nolita ...

in New York City.

= Heaven's Gate (2021)

= The title refers to Michael Cimino’s 1980 film of the same name, whose excessive production costs bankrupted United Artists and effectively brought to an end the era of director as auteur, paving the way for the studio domination of the medium, which has continued to the present-day. In May 2021, Heaven's Gate premiered at The Shed, Hudson Yards, New York City. Heaven's Gate was a major exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, which opened in June 2021. In October 2021, Heaven's Gate replaced the permanent installation of Civilization (Megaplex) at The Standard in New York City.

Public installations

In 2001, Brambilla was commissioned by

Creative Time Creative Time is a New York-based nonprofit arts organization. It was founded in 1974 to support the creation of innovative, site-specific, socially engaged artworks in the public realm, particularly in vacant spaces of historical and architectura ...

to present on the Jumbotron screen in Times Square, New York City, titled ''Superstar''. Inspired by Yves Klein’s photograph ''Leap into the Void'' (1960), ''Superstar'' presents a subject appearing perpetually frozen in time while the document of the moment itself slowly descends. Filmed in a pre-

Matrix Matrix most commonly refers to: * ''The Matrix'' (franchise), an American media franchise ** ''The Matrix'', a 1999 science-fiction action film ** "The Matrix", a fictional setting, a virtual reality environment, within ''The Matrix'' (franchis ...

era, the performance in ''Superstar'' was captured with 180 cameras mounted in a 360 degree ring that show a 1/500 second wedge of time. In 2013, as part of the

Art Production Fund Art Production Fund (APF) is a non-profit organization under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code that presents public art throughout the United States. It was founded in 2000 by Yvonne Force Villareal and Doreen Remen. it is directed by Casey ...

, Brambilla presented his site-specific video installation at Time Warner Center titled ''Anthropocene,'' which uses LiDAR scanning technologies to track the terrain from the southwest corner to the northeast corner of New York's Central Park, displayed on two intersecting cinematic channels. In March 2015, he presented ''Apollo XVIII'' at Times Square – a video-installation of countdown to a fictitious flight to the moon using archival footage from real NASA missions and computer-generated imagery. In 2019, Creative Time and Art Production Fund commissioned Brambilla to create ''Nude Descending a Staircase No.3,'' which was screened at World Trade Center station. ''Nude Descending a Staircase No.3'' reimagines the iconic Marcel Duchamp painting, ''

Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 ''Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2'' (French: ''Nu descendant un escalier n° 2'') is a 1912 painting by Marcel Duchamp. The work is widely regarded as a Modernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time. Before its first pre ...

'', into the dimension of time using machine-learning technology. The installation was also at the Biennale Némo in Paris, France, as well as the Maison Margiela stores in SoHo, New York, and Miami, Florida. In the same year, Brambilla created an art-video backdrop for the opera ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' by

Claude Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...

at the Opera Vlaanderen – a collaborative performance piece with artists Marina Abramović,

Damien Jalet Damien Jalet (born 17 August 1976) is a Belgo-French freelance choreographer, dancer and performer working internationally. His work is often collaborative, creating intricate bounds between dance and other artistic media such as visual art, fa ...

, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and

Iris van Herpen Iris van Herpen (born June 5, 1984) is a Dutch fashion designer known for fusing technology with traditional haute couture craftsmanship. Van Herpen opened her own label ''Iris van Herpen'' in 2007. In 2011, the Dutch designer became a guest-mem ...

. The backdrop was created using archival footage from NASA to "create a 'symbolist' journey through the cosmos which unfolds onstage." In 2020, Brambilla also produced the "visual intermezzos" for Abramović's opera 7 ''Deaths of Maria Callas.'' Inspired by cloud tank photography used in films like '' Kwaidan'', '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' and ''

Breaking The Waves ''Breaking the Waves'' is a 1996 psychological drama film directed and co-written by Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier and starring English stage actress Emily Watson as her feature film acting debut. Set in the Scottish Highlands in the early 197 ...

'', Brambilla employed particle simulations to create impressionistic yet hyper-realistic skies that "set the tone for aria Callas’ psychological condition, or her characters in the seven different operas she played in. Each intermezzo represented a specific state of mind as she reached the end of her life."

Other projects

In 2010, Brambilla was commissioned by Kanye West to direct his music video for 'Power'. In an interview with ''Vulture'', he described the work as a "video portrait of Kanye," depicted in a reinvention of a neoclassical painting. During the same year, he directed a trailer for the third-person shooter '' Spec Ops: The Line'', developed by Yager Development. In 2020, Brambilla created ''The Four Temperaments'' where

Cate Blanchett Catherine Elise Blanchett (; born 14 May 1969) is an Australian actor. Regarded as one of the finest performers of her generation, she is known for her versatile work across independent films, blockbusters, and the stage. She has received nu ...

performs four sets of distinct character types divided according to a personality classification first defined by the Greek philosopher, Galen. In November 2021, ''The Four Temperaments'' was part of a group exhibition on augmented reality at the Phi Centre in Montreal, Quebec. During the same year, he also participated in the group-show ''Terminal'' in City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand, with his video installation ''Approach'' (1999). Filmed at John F. Kennedy Airport, passengers arriving from long-haul flights enter the terminal looking for contact with someone familiar. The footage was shot on camcorders equipped with telephoto lenses and slowed down to emphasize the moment of transition that each subject experiences as they arrive. Similarly to ''Approach'', ''Transit,'' a collection of photographs Brambilla took in and around airports, was published by Booth-Clibborn Editions in 2000.

Film

''"Sync,"'' ''Destricted''

His short film ''Sync'' (2005) was screened at the

2006 Cannes Film Festival The 59th Cannes Film Festival was held from 17 to 28 May 2006. Twenty films from eleven countries were in competition for the Palme d'Or. The President of the Official selection Jury was Wong Kar-wai, the first Chinese director to preside over the ...

and at the

as part of film anthology ''

Destricted ''Destricted'' is a British-American anthology film that explores the line where art and pornography intersect. The UK and US film releases had overlapping but different short art-house erotic films. The film collection won awards at a range of ...

''. ''Sync'' is Brambilla’s first sampled video work and is a reflection of the rising threshold to graphic sex and brutality in contemporary popular culture and film.

''Demolition Man''

Brambilla made his directorial debut with the

futuristic The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ...

action film '' Demolition Man,'' premiered October 8, 1993, starring

Sylvester Stallone Sylvester Enzio Stallone (; born Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone, ) is an American actor and filmmaker. After his beginnings as a struggling actor for a number of years upon arriving to New York City in 1969 and later Hollywood in 1974, h ...

, Wesley Snipes and

Sandra Bullock Sandra Annette Bullock (; born July 26, 1964) is an American actress and producer. The recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Sandra Bullock, various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, Bullock was ...

. The film debuted at No. 1 on the box office. and grossed $58,055,768 by the end of its box office run in North America and $159,055,768 worldwide.

Awards and recognition

Brambilla received the Tiffany Comfort Foundation Award for Film and Video in

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

and the Colbert Foundation award in 2000.

Selected projects

*''Heaven's Gate'', 2021, single-channel 8K video installation *''Creation (Megaplex)'', 2020, single-channel high-definition video installation *"The Seven Deaths of Maria Callas", 2020, visual intermezzos for Marina Abramović's opera *"Pelléas et Mélisande (opera)", 2019 *''Nude Descending A Staircase No. 3'', 2019, 3-channel high-definition video installation *''The Master Builder'', 2019, single-channel 3-D video installation *''Lunar Atlas'', 2016, multi-channel high-definition video installation *''Crystal Observatory'', 2015, high-definition video installation *''Constellation'', 2015, high-definition video projection *''Apollo XVII'', 2015, 4K

ultra-high definition Ultra-high-definition television (also known as Ultra HD television, Ultra HD, UHDTV, UHD and Super Hi-Vision) today includes 4K UHD and 8K UHD, which are two digital video formats with an aspect ratio of 16:9. These were first proposed by ...

, dual-screen video tile display in custom enclosure *''Echo'', 2014, ultra high-definition video installation *''Anthropocene'', 2013, 3-channel video installation *''Creation (Megaplex)'', 2012, single-channel high-definition video installation. Collection Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul *''Civilization (Megaplex) 3-D'', 2011, single-channel high-definition video installation. Collection Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul *''Evolution (Megaplex) 3-D'', 2010, single-channel high-definition video installation. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo and Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul *''Civilization'' ''(Megaplex)'', 2008, single-channel high-definition video installation *"Power", 2010, music video performed by Kanye West. Collection Museum of Moving Image, New York *''Cathedral'', 2007, single-channel

high-definition video High-definition video (HD video) is video of higher resolution and quality than standard-definition. While there is no standardized meaning for ''high-definition'', generally any video image with considerably more than 480 vertical scan lines (No ...

installation *''Sync'', 2005, 3-channel video installation *''Half-Life'', 2002, 3-channel video installation *''Wall of Death'', 2001, single-channel video installation. Collection Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York *''Approach'', 1999, 4-channel video installation suspended in custom enclosures with ceiling mounts. Collection Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. *''Getaway'', 1999, single-channel video installation *''Cyclorama'', 1999, 9-channel video installation. Collection San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

Filmography

* '' Demolition Man'' (1993) * '' Excess Baggage'' (1997) * ''

'' (segment "Sync") (2006)

Notes

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Brambilla, Marco Living people 1960 births Film people from Milan Italian film directors Canadian film directors Italian photographers Canadian photographers Toronto Metropolitan University alumni Italian emigrants to Canada Naturalized citizens of Canada