Renowned digital artist Marco Brambilla’s museum exhibition leverages LG’s leading display technology and Blackdove’s digital art platform to present a unique modern gallery experience.
Art is always changing, evolving alongside society and culture to reflect the interests, issues and technologies of the time. The digital evolution has now made its way into the realm of fine arts, with Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) hosting a digital art exhibition wherein guests can experience Marco Brambilla’s Heaven’s Gate, which he describes as a “video monument to Hollywood’s veneration of glamour while retelling the history of the world in seven distinct phases.”
Brambilla’s highly emotive and fluid representation of humanity’s perpetual quest for the ultimate fantasy, depicted through the lens of Hollywood imagery and iconography, is presented in the museum’s Bank of America Gallery where the seven-minute video enthralls visitors on a floor-to-ceiling video wall composed of seven digital displays from LG Business Solutions USA. Working with Marc Billings of Blackdove, developers of the category-defining digital art platform for residential and commercial use, as well as museums and art galleries, Brambilla leveraged LG’s display technology to ensure that every visitor experiences the colors and movement of Heaven’s Gate precisely as the artist intended.
“As digital artwork has grown from a niche pursuit to a major global force over the last several years, artists developing algorithmic visuals and video pieces have recognized that this is one art form where the appearance and viewing experience can change dramatically depending on the specific digital display used for presentation,” Billings explained.
As the creator of Blackdove, Billings was perfectly positioned to help Brambilla choose and procure the ideal digital display solution to present Heaven’s Gate. The video art piece is vertically oriented at a roughly 5:1 ratio, giving viewers a literal top-to-bottom view of Hollywood’s stylistic evolution. Comprising seven of LG’s high-end 55” Full HD digital displays (model SVM5H) that feature a nearly-invisible 0.44mm bezel, the unique video wall canvas appears as a single cohesive screen, allowing viewers to become enrapt in the artwork with no glare, image separation or techno-clutter.
“Blackdove is designed to enable the delivery of digital art to any display, but LG’s unique webOS platform allows us to create especially elegant installations. It’s essentially a computer running inside the display that can be loaded with any number of proprietary apps or content, eliminating the need for separate content devices and wiring,” Billings added.
After a year in the making, I was thrilled to see Heaven’s Gate at Pérez Art Museum Miami,” Brambilla said. “The totemic display could only be made possible with LG’s ultra-thin bezel monitors sourced and powered by Blackdove.”
For Billings, Brambilla, and Blackdove, the digital exhibition is a groundbreaking event that sets the stage for artists and the industry to rapidly introduce digital artwork to museum environments. Leveraging the exploding popularity of digital art over the last few years, most notably NFTs that enable ownership of unique, single-production digital creations, the Heaven’s Gate exhibition explores both the creative potential of the medium and the cultural reception of digital experiences as fine art. For museums and artists, this natural evolution toward digital media presentation may spark interest in a new, younger generation of art enthusiasts who have only experienced a world dominated by screens.
