Marco Brambilla

18 October - 22 November 2008

© Marco Brambilla Still from Civilization (Megaplex), 2008 2 minutes 40 seconds, Continuous loop color and sound High Definition Blu-Ray DVD, Dimensions variable

MARCO BRAMBILLA
"Living the Dream"

October 18 – November 22, 2008

Christopher Grimes Gallery is pleased to present, Living the Dream, a solo exhibition of new video works by Marco Brambilla. Brambilla’s new work Civilization (Megaplex), illustrates a contemporary and often satirical take on the concepts of Heaven and Hell. Cathedral, in the South Gallery, investigates the spectacle of contemporary consumerism.
Civilization(Megaplex), a metaphysical journey from Hell to Heaven, is portrayed by computer altered found footage. The journey begins under Kurosawa's “Dreams” volcano, then rises through a purgatory populated by images of suburbia, demolition derbies and shopping malls, finally soaring towards a paradise of beauty contestants, cherubs, bodybuilders, then past the peaks of Mount Olympus to a cosmic portal inspired by Gustav Dore's paintings, as reinterpreted in the movie, “The Fountain”. Civilization (Megaplex) is an epic video mural containing over 300 individual channels of looped video into a multi-layered seamless tableau of interconnecting images.
Frances Richard from Art Forum states:
Marco Brambilla has parallel careers as a video installation artist and a commercial film director, and his videos benefit from a savvy, self-assured camera style and sense of timing that likely derive from his industry work. Nevertheless, their giddy, elliptical studies of speed, stasis, and masculinity seem to glory in the small scale auteur’s freedom to be non-narrative and idiosyncratic.”
Cathedral, in the South Gallery was filmed in The Eaton Center shopping mall in Toronto, Canada at the height of consumerism: Christmas. Christmas shoppers are shown during “rush hour”. The constant flux of shoppers, weaving their way through the veins of the mall, shuttled from one location to the next through arteries of escalators and elevators, carried from one purchase opportunity to the next. The work is inspired by the time study work, during the American industrial revolution, of Frederick Winslow Taylor and the motion study work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. The movements of the hustling people have been slowed down and the time frame shifted, emphasizing the mindless actions of consumers. The images in Cathedral are superimposed and multi-layered, creating a kaleidoscope view and disorienting landscape of the epic space.
Born in Milan, Italy, Brambilla now lives and works in Los Angeles, California. His career spans from fine arts, film and commercials. He has had solo shows at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, in 2003, and the Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, in 2004, as well as the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, in 2004. His work belongs to the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art, and the ARCO foundation in Madrid. He has been awarded both the Tiffany Comfort Foundation and Colbert foundation awards for his video installations.

www.cgrimes.com