Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016

At the backdrop-painting studio at Warner Brothers in Hollywood, California, which Alex Israel occupies as his painting studio, the artist hired a backdrop painter who specializes in painting skies for movies to make this work. The painting’s extra-wide proportions echo those of CinemaScope, a panoramic movie format with stereo sound developed in the 1950s to create an enveloping experience for spectators beyond what the increasingly dominant format of television could achieve. Here, Israel transposes that sense of immersion into the space of the gallery, shifting the artifice of the backdrop into real space, and creating a sky that appears simultaneously natural and artificial.