"I found it not just improbable but almost impossible that an artist should find a new way to unite so many fields of art, a new way of seeing and thinking."
WIM WENDERS
A New Cinema of the Soul
Joe Ramirez is a 21st-century Renaissance artist who redefines the moving image through a patented intersection of painting, light, and cinema. In his signature project, The Gold Projections, films are projected onto a large, elaborately hand-gilded gold disk. This transforms the moving image into a luminous, material experience – light acquires weight, depth, and a physical presence, emerging as a sculptural phenomenon from a 24-karat gold surface.
Gold as Structure
In this practice, gold is not merely symbolic; it is structural. The textured field receives and releases light, causing images to seem suspended between surface and depth. The gilded disk acts as a screen surface that shapes the behaviour of projected light.
Fresco Cinema
By replacing conventional screens with hand-gilded wooden discs, Ramirez creates a “fresco cinema” where film gains the permanence and texture of an painting.
Every work resists spectacle, relying on duration, atmosphere, and the viewer’s own perceptual shift to find meaning.
At a time of AI saturation and fragmented attention,
The Gold Projections offers something radically
different: slowness, reflection, and perceptual presence.
“Invigorating and inspiring.”
PAUL SCHRADER
When I stand in front of the disk, it shows the history
of painting. It’s like the monolith in Kubrick’s 2001.
I want to see a room of these… PATTI SMITH
Midas touch: the artist using gold to turn films
into flickering frescoes. THE GUARDIAN
Joe Ramirez
Joe Ramirez is a Berlin-based Californian artist with a singular installation practice in contemporary moving-image art. Inspired by the restoration of the Sistine Chapel – watching Michelangelo’s Last Judgment scroll past like a stop-motion film – he spent twelve years developing a patented process that projects film onto gold, transforming light into a sculptural phenomenon.
His contemplative installations bridge the cinematic lineages of Tarkovsky and Warhol with Eastern and Western spiritual philosophies, exploring the profound depths of perception and consciousness.
The Gold Projections
THE FOURTH GARDEN
[In Development] Inspired by Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights , currently in development with Executive Producers Wim Wenders and Alex Gibney .
Contact & Enquiries
Experience the work firsthand. Get in touch to enquire about viewings, collections or contributng to The Gold Projections. hello@thegoldprojections.com