Game Art: Feng Mengbo's The Long March: Restart (2009)
With “Q4U” the Chinese New Media Artist Feng Mengbo introduced Game Art to the international art scene at Documenta 11. His latest work is a videogame called Restart based on the “Long March: Game Over", a series of 42 oil paintings made in 1994, which links the Long March, (a famous Chinese military campaign, from 1934 to 1936, led by which Mao Zedong) with signs of popular entertainment as videogames. The paintings resemble screen shots from early home gaming system, with digitized Red Army solider who hurls cans of Coca-Cola at his enemies, with a cast of characters that range from Street Fighters to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The videogame is an interactive installation based on the paintings. Restart was showed at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) inBeijing between July and August 2009. [Mathias Jansson]Link: Video and Event Description (Chinese)Link: Event Description (English)