Marco Brambilla's Video Get's Attention at Santa Monica Museum of Art

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
By Jori Finkel

Marco Brambilla

CALIFORNIA - Video artist Marco Brambilla knows that some people will see his decision to go 3-D as a marketing gimmick. "It is meant to get attention," he says. "When you walk into the gallery and characters start coming off the walls, it feels otherworldly." But he also sees the 3-D format as a natural fit for his recent work — which is all about the visual excesses of Hollywood moviemaking and the sped-up consumer culture that goes with it. Once a mainstream film director himself, best known for the 1993 action movie "Demolition Man," Brambilla is not afraid to use the tricks of the trade in his museum and gallery work. And he is now using 3-D technology to add another dimension to his hyperactive, super-saturated, collage-style video artworks made exclusively of film clips. "My desire was to present the most epic human themes in a way as immediate and bombastic as possible, seeing them all through a pop culture lens," says Brambilla, 50, based in New York. "In my piece 'Civilization' it's the story of Dante's Inferno, the spiritual journey from hell to heaven. In 'Evolution' it's a narrative about conflict throughout the ages." [link]