Exciting. Fantastical. Nostalgic. These words represent Marco Brambilla and his new exhibition “Double Feature”. Be ready to experience a world of phantasmagoric video collages this Friday at Fotografiska Berlin!
Marco Brambilla’s exhibition Double Feature presents a dazzling spectacle of Hollywood’s cult of glamour and celebrity. In his two maximalist video collages, Brambilla re-contextualizes layers of popular imagery to reveal the empty promises of the Hollywood “Dream Factory”. His works both celebrate and satirize the excess of the entertainment industry, and our obsession with it. More specifically, the works from his Megaplex series give us a window to challenge old ideals and conventions.
Double Feature brings back a nostalgic motion picture phenomenon: the programming of two films instead of a single feature. Fotografiska will exhibit both the first and latest work from Brambilla’s Megaplex series: Heaven’s Gate (2022) and Civilization (2008). The works share a common language and the use of the technique of video collage which Brambilla pioneered in 2008 with Civilization.
Duality of Life
Heaven’s Gate takes you on a journey through seven levels of purgatory, each depicted as a fantastical landscape of looping samples from Hollywood’s Golden Age. In detail, the work references gaming, news, cinema and reality TV, brought together in a hyper-sensory parallel universe.
Civilization offers a psychedelic journey from hell to heaven, using a tableau of collaged film loops lifted from iconic moments of cinematic history. Consequently, the digitally assembled video canvas depicts a hyper-realistic realm of clouds, meadows and burning cityscapes, serving as a backdrop for humanity’s frenzied production and consumption of its own media.
“Brambilla’s Megaplex series (Civilization, Evolution, Creation and Heavens Gate 2008-21) is – according to the artist – set between the birth and death of the universe. The visual overload makes clear that the history of art and cinema is over: all previous styles can be quoted infinitely.”
Daniel Birnbaum, Marco Brambilla’s Labyrinth of Labyrinths
Using state-of-the-art technology such as AI and Computer Graphics, Marco Brambilla brings his grand artistic vision to life. Therefore, he transports us to a place where reality and fiction blend together – shining a light on the fiction we are consumed by, and the realities we may wish to escape.
About the artist
Marco Brambilla (*1960) is a London-based artist. With roots in Hollywood, he is known for his elaborate re-contextualization of popular and found imagery, as well as his pioneering use of digital imaging technologies in video installation and art.
Brambilla’s work has been internationally exhibited and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Perez Museum (Miami), among many others.
Brambilla has presented several public art installations, including his Nude Descending Staircase No.3 at the Oculus World Trade Center in New York, Heaven’s Gate at The Sphere in Las Vegas, Outernet in London and Apollo XVIII as well as The Approximations of Utopia at New York Times Square’s Midnight Moment series in 2015 and 2024 respectively. His work has been featured at the Venice Film Festival and Sundance Film Festivals and Foundation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland.
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