VIVE Arts Announces Exclusive Art Exhibition on VIVE Flow

MIAMI, Nov. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- VIVE Arts, a global initiative aimed at enhancing artistic creation and appreciation through the latest technologies, has partnered with renowned artist and filmmaker Marco Brambilla to bring the artist's latest artwork, Heaven's Gate, to HTC VIVE's new immersive glasses, VIVE Flow. Heaven's Gate will debut on VIVE Flow in an exclusive event at Art Basel Miami Beach on Friday, December 3 at the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

"We're thrilled to work with Marco Brambilla. His forward-thinking, thought-provoking approach in Heaven's Gate challenges the viewers' senses, while pushing the boundaries of immersion when viewed in VIVE Flow. This partnership advances VIVE Arts' mission, enabling artists to achieve their creative vision through digital innovation in the arts, democratizing creativity and preserving cultural heritage for the world," said Celina Yeh, Executive Director, VIVE Arts.

VIVE Arts was established in 2017 and over the last five years, the art and technology program has partnered with leading international artists and institutions to create ground-breaking digital artworks and exhibits, transforming how art and culture can be experienced.

VIVE Arts has enabled institutions to add powerful new dimension to their exhibitions and storytelling through VR, engaging new and diverse audiences around the world, including Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass at the Musée du Louvre in Paris; Curious Alice at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London; and Claude Monet, The Water Lily Obsession at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. By bringing Heaven's Gate to VIVE Flow, VIVE Arts is bringing the art viewing experience to a new medium: immersive glasses.

"Art is a medium that feeds our emotions and promotes mindful contemplation, which fits perfectly with the philosophy behind our new VIVE Flow immersive glasses, designed from the ground up to help people focus on how they feel. Together with Marco Brambilla's remarkable Heaven's Gate, we're shaping the next evolution of the art viewing experience that elevates the senses and makes art more accessible to everyone around the world," said Cher Wang, Co-Founder and Chairman of HTC.

Weighing about the same as a chocolate bar at 189 grams, VIVE Flow's lightweight, dual-hinge design makes artwork and exhibits more immersive and portable – making it easier to enjoy art, anytime, anywhere. Its 3D spatial audio augments the visual experience of Heaven's Gate and transports viewers to a deeper viewing experience. The glasses form factor of VIVE Flow also provides viewers with a personal, intimate space as they ascend through Brambilla's overwhelming spectacle of Hollywood fantasy, while creating a collective experience with others seeing Heaven's Gate in VIVE Flow.

"The VIVE Arts installation at Pérez Art Museum Miami will be the first time a large group will be able to enter the world of Heaven's Gate together. This democratization of VR technology is perfectly suited to the tone of the piece and will enhance my retelling of the seven levels of purgatory as a communal experience," says Brambilla.

Marco Brambilla's Heaven's Gate is a video installation in which the viewer levitates through seven fantastical vertical landscapes of seamlessly collaged film samples. A lavish, satirical and vertigo-inducing take on the silver screen spectacle of Hollywood dreams and excesses, Heaven's Gate both celebrates collective storytelling consciousness and satirizes its saturated glamour. Created as a VR experience and totemic video installation, the work ascends through the seven levels of Purgatory, each stage its own landscape of looping samples lifted from iconic moments of cinematic history.

Through this absorbing work of digital psychedelia, Brambilla highlights the sensory overload of today's compendium of popular culture to engulf the viewer's senses with a hyper-saturation of imagery almost impossible to sustain.

"In the work, Brambilla makes visible the concomitant tensions present in religion, industry and celebrity, ascension and fall, innocence and experience, vanity and pageantry, sexuality and awakening, simplicity and excess. Speaking the language of Hollywood's dream factory, it communicates a nostalgia that feels at once familiar and uncanny and seemingly appropriate to the mood of 2020, where media saturation created a convergence of fact and fiction in a voracious cycle of introspection and collective anxiety. Heaven's Gate likewise unravels into a dreamlike spectacle of virtual chaos. The work produces an overpowering labyrinth of labyrinths, a sinuous spreading visual maze seems to encompass the past and the future. In some way it involves stars," an extract from Daniel Birnbaum's essay "Marco Brambilla's Labyrinth of Labyrinths."

Heaven's Gate's debut in VIVE Flow introduces our ongoing collaboration with Brambilla in VR, tech and digital art to build a diverse ecosystem that compliments and pushes the boundaries of Marco's practice. Brambilla's dissection of contemporary culture and digital consumption encapsulates VIVE Arts commitment to fusing art and technology to explore the experiential possibilities of both.

Heaven's Gate is on installation at the Pérez Art Museum Miami through early 2022, including a VR viewing room with VIVE Focus 3, HTC VIVE's all-in-one wireless headset with outstanding visuals, ergonomic design and superior audio. Visit https://www.pamm.org/heavensgate for more details.

For more information about the exclusive viewing of Heaven's Gate on VIVE Flow, please contact [email protected].

About HTC
HTC VIVE is the premier virtual reality (VR) platform and ecosystem that creates true-to-life VR experiences for businesses and consumers. The VIVE ecosystem is built around premium VR hardware, software, and content. The VIVE business encompasses best-in-class XR hardware; VIVEPORT platform and app store; VIVE Enterprise Solutions for business customers; VIVE X, a US$100M VR business accelerator; and VIVE ARTS for cultural initiatives. For more information, please visit www.vive.com.

About VIVE Arts
VIVE Arts harnesses cutting-edge technology to transform the way culture is experienced, working with leading artists, museums and cultural organisations to create ground-breaking digital artworks and exhibits, that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Since its launch in 2017, VIVE Arts has established over 50 partnerships with leading cultural institutions and organisations including Tate Modern in London, The Louvre, Musée d'Orsay and Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the National Palace Museum in Taipei, the ArtScience Museum in Singapore as well as the Venice Biennale Arte. VIVE Arts continues to evolve and innovate and will launch a global trading platform, building a complete ecosystem for digital art. For further information, please visit: arts.vive.com  

About Marco Brambilla
Marco Brambilla is a video installation artist based in London. 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; ARCO Foundation (Madrid); and the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington D.C). Notable shows include New Museum, New York; Santa Monica Museum of Art (Retrospective); Seoul Biennial, Korea; Broad Art Museum; and Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland.

Brambilla has worked with Creative Time and Art Production Fund in New York to present public art installations, including his Nude Descending Staircase No.3 (2019) presented at Oculus WTC by Art Production Fund during Frieze New York.

Brambilla is a recipient of the Tiffany Comfort Foundation and Tiffany Colbert Foundation awards. His work has been featured at the Venice Film Festival and Sundance Film Festivals, as well as Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland.

About Pérez Art Museum Miami
 Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) promotes artistic expression and the exchange of ideas, advancing public knowledge and appreciation of art, architecture, and design, and reflecting the diverse community of its pivotal geographic location at the crossroads of the Americas. The 37-year-old South Florida institution, formerly known as Miami Art Museum (MAM) and led by Director Franklin Sirmans, opened a new building, designed by world-renowned architects Herzog & de Meuron, on December 4, 2013 in Downtown Miami's Museum Park. The facility is a state-of-the-art model for sustainable museum design and progressive programming and features 200,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor program space with flexible galleries; shaded outdoor verandas; a waterfront restaurant and bar; a museum shop; and an education center with a library, media lab, and classroom spaces.

SOURCE VIVE Arts

Related Links

http://arts.vive.com