GAMESCENES

EVENT: NINA DAVIES’S GLITCH GUISERS (AUGUST 23 2024, LONDON)

Nina Davies: Glitch Guisers

04:00pm - 07:30pm, Fri 23 Aug 2024

The Photographers' Gallery

16-18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW, United Kingdom

 

London's The Photographers Gallery is hosting a free outdoor performance by Nina Davies, titled Glitch Guisers, in the streets of Soho Photography Quarter. This event builds on the fictional narrative from Davies’ film, Never Let Them Know Your Next Move, which will be screened on the Gallery's third floor throughout the evening.

Glitch Guisers features five dancers engaging in 'glitch guising' as they move through the streets to a central point where they will freeze, evoking the 2016 viral Mannequin Challenge. This performance reflects the film’s themes, where protagonists discuss the automation of labor. Workers at a distribution center reclaim agency by performing glitch-like movements, confusing the system and allowing themselves a break. Click here to learn more about Davis' practice.

Coinciding with the performance is a presentation of Nina Davies’ For An Imaginary Page. Glitch Guisers will take place on the hour from 4pm to 7pm in Soho Photography Quarter. Attendees are encouraged to film the performances and share the content online to celebrate the artist's work.

Additionally, Never Let Them Know Your Next Move will be screened on a continuous loop on the Gallery's third floor. The film is 10 minutes long. All exhibitions in the Gallery are free to enter until 8pm as part of the Friday Lates program.

Nina Davies (b. 1991) is a Canadian-British artist who considers the present moment through observing dance in popular culture. She questions how it is disseminated, circulated, made, and consumed.

LINK: Nina Davies

LINK: Glitch Guisers

EVENT: FERNANDO PEREIRA GOMES (JULY 19 - AUGUST 1 2024, ONLINE)

Light Study

digital video (1280 x 720), color, sound, 28’ 32”, 2015, Brazil

created by Fernando Pereira Gomes

 

In Light Study, a male avatar from Grand Theft Auto V stands unwavering, gazing into the camera for nearly thirty minutes as weather and light conditions shift subtly yet continuously, painting the scene with an ever-changing palette. The camera remains mostly fixed, with slight movements adding to the contemplative stillness. Dominant wind sounds blend with ambient city noises, creating an immersive backdrop. The artist discovered this scene by accident when the game idled into screen-saver mode. He noticed the light changing on the avatar’s face from morning to night and back. Fascinated by this passage of time, he recorded the scene, furthering his exploration of digital realms and their parallels with our experience of life and time.

Fernando Pereira Gomes was born in São Paulo, Brasil in 1993, currently living and working in Paonia, Colorado. After spending his teenage years in Europe, Gomes moved to New York where he earned his BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts (SVA). In New York, he created a body of street photography depicting life in the city, seeking moments of stillness and poetry within the ever buzzing metropolis. In 2014, his groundbreaking in-game photography series Procedural Generation garnered international attention, both in print and online, culminating in a solo exhibition curated by Alexandra Ungern-Sternberg at Ateliê Alê in São Paulo, Brazil, titled Geração Processual. Additionally, selected images were featured in the group exhibition Transition at the Y Gallery in Minsk, Belarus, also in 2014. Gomes’s work has been presented at prominent venues such as the Noorderlicht Photofestival, Miami-Project, and Photo-LA.

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GAME ART: ED FORNELIES’S INSIDE OUT 2 (2024)

Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths

Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths

Recently presented at Carlos/Ishikawa gallery in London between May 23 – July 6, 2024, Ed Fornieles’s Inside Out 2 is an ambitious exploration of the intersections between corporate structures, personal relationships, and digital interactions, presented through a richly narrative-driven multimedia approach. This project extends Fornieles’ continuous investigation into the dynamics of digital and social spheres, previously exemplified in his Dorm Daze project, where participants inhabited fictional Facebook profiles, blurring the lines between personal and fictional identities.

Central to Inside Out 2 is the conceptualization of a company, Fini, as both a work of art and a corporate entity, challenging traditional notions by positioning the company as a medium that generates value through engagement rather than tangible products. The narrative intricately weaves the concept of friendship into corporate dynamics, prompting profound questions about the nature of relationships within commercial and digital contexts. Drawing on the Brazilian Anthropophagy movement, which advocated for the cultural digestion and transformation of colonial influences, Fornieles illustrates how digital and corporate cultures can be absorbed and reinterpreted.

Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths

The gallery space, referred to as The Zone, acts as a transformative environment where objects and concepts are recontextualized, allowing viewers to engage in a suspension of disbelief. Fornieles provocatively suggests that shared hallucinations, or mutual agreements on perceived realities, form the basis of our understanding of the world, thereby challenging the stability of reality itself. The project employs a range of narrative techniques, from cute aesthetics to speculative fiction and historical revisionism, creating a multilayered experience that defies conventional boundaries between fiction and reality.

Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths

Envisioning future expansions, Fornieles introduces the Oom app, positioned at the intersection of messaging and mobile gaming, and a movie that combines live-action with animation, further extending the project  "narrative universe. By discussing the role of venture capital in the growth of new companies, Fornieles draws intriguing parallels between the ambitions of artists and venture capitalists in their shared pursuit of world-building, highlighting the economic and philosophical challenges of sustaining such an innovative endeavor. Inside Out 2 is a complex work that invites viewers to interrogate contemporary culture through the lenses of corporate structures, digital identities, and personal relationships, urging a reconsideration of how we engage with the so-called “digital”.

LINK: Ed Fornieles’s Inside Out 2

GAME ART: ÁDÁM VARGA'S TOMCAT - LEVELS 1-4 (2020-2024)

Ádám Varga's oeuvre represents a compelling convergence of video game aesthetics and contemporary art, skillfully navigating the realms of digital image manipulation, appropriation, and transformation. In his 2019 publication 1.5:10, Varga engages in a dialogue between the reproducibility of painting and the formal lexicon of video games. Through a process of digital editing and vector-based execution, Varga's work transcends traditional boundaries, offering a critical examination of the intersections between digital and physical art forms.

Varga's practice is deeply rooted in the visual and conceptual elements of early video games, as exemplified by his reinterpretation of the Tomcat video game levels. Tomcat: The F-14 Fighter Simulator (1988), which released for various platforms including DOS and the Commodore 64. A combat flight simulation that aimed to provide a realistic experience of piloting an F-14 Tomcat, the game had players engaging in dogfights, bombing runs, and various missions that tested their flying and combat skills.

Ádám Varga: Mapping, 2024, Vintage gallery, Courtesy of Vintage gallery, photo: Marcell Piti

These works, presented in enlarged and distorted vertical formats, evoke a cartographic perspective that parallels the player's navigational experience within the game. Varga's manipulation of the pixel structure into elongated, rectangular forms creates a disorienting anamorphic effect, drawing attention to the inherent distortions in both digital and cartographic representations. This distortion, reminiscent of the challenges in projecting the spherical globe onto a flat map, underscores the paradoxes of visual accuracy and fidelity.

Ádám Varga, Tomcat – Level 2, 2024
acrylic on canvas, 185x145cm

The use of a foil cutting machine as a contemporary equivalent of the printing block exemplifies Varga's commitment to exploring the reproducibility of artistic processes. By manually assigning vector shapes to each image in Adobe Illustrator and subsequently utilizing these shapes in the painting process, Varga engages in a dialogue with the mechanical and the manual, the digital and the analog. The intricate, labor-intensive procedure of plotting and removing templates becomes a performative act of mapping, emphasizing the artist's intimate engagement with the visual terrain he constructs.

Ádám Varga, Tomcat – Level 3, 2024
acrylic on canvas, 185x145cm

Varga's conceptual framework is enriched by his references to Vilém Flusser's philosophy of scanning in photography. The process of mapping, both literal and metaphorical, becomes an exercise in attention and recognition, as the viewer's gaze traverses the image surface, piecing together abstract elements to form a coherent visual narrative. This act of "scanning" parallels the player's experience in video games, where the gradual revelation of the map mirrors the unfolding of the artwork's visual structure.

Ádám Varga, Tomcat – Level 2, 2024
acrylic on canvas, 185x145cm

Through his exploration of video game-inspired aesthetics, Varga challenges conventional notions of originality and reproduction, creating a body of work that is both a homage to and a critique of digital culture. His paintings, positioned at the nexus of art and technology, invite viewers to reconsider the ways in which we perceive and interact with images in an increasingly digitized world. Varga's practice exemplifies the enduring relevance and influence of video game aesthetics in contemporary art, offering a nuanced perspective on the possibilities of digital and analog hybridity.

Ádám Varga (b. 1995) pursued his painting studies at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts from 2014 to 2019, with a notable stint as a visiting student at the Art Academy of Latvia in Riga in 2017. His burgeoning career included an internship at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst in Leipzig in 2019. Varga's artistic excellence has been recognized through the prestigious Derkovits Scholarship, awarded to him from 2021 to 2024, and his shortlisting for the MODEM prize by the MODEM Center for Modern and Contemporary Art in Debrecen in 2022. Beyond his individual practice, he is an active member of PINCE, an artist-run space in Budapest, where he has contributed to numerous independent exhibitions and projects. Varga's work interrogates the intricate dynamics of production and reproduction in art. His diverse painting projects delve into the dialectical relationship between these concepts, highlighting the inherent contradictions and unresolved tensions. Central to his practice is an exploration of the neutrality of production processes, the impact of digitalization on painting, and the questioning of authenticity. His sources are varied, encompassing definitions, files, digital images, computer games, and diagrams. In recent years, Varga has incorporated the use of a plotter in his painting process, not only for its primary function but also for experimental purposes. This tool plays a crucial role in his examination of the nature of painting, allowing him to navigate a technical and conceptual spectrum that exposes the tension between the reproduced character of mass-produced products and the uniqueness of original artworks. His practice ultimately challenges and redefines the boundaries of painting, presenting a nuanced critique of production and originality in contemporary art.

LINK: Ádám Varga

EVENT: FILE 2024: QUBIT AI (JULY 3 - AUGUST 25 2024, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL)

FILE 2024: QUBIT AI

July 3 - August 25 2024

Centro Cultural FIESP

Avenida Paulista, 1313 Em frente a estação Trianon-Masp do Metrô

Bela Vista, São Paulo - SP, 01311-200, Brazil

 

In the heart of São Paulo, at the FIESP Cultural Center, the FILE 2024 festival unfurls a groundbreaking intersection of art and technology through its latest exhibition, QUBIT AI: Quantum Computing and Synthetic Artificial Intelligence. Curated by Ricardo Barreto and Paula Perissinotto, the exhibition, running from July 3rd to August 25th, promises to redefine the boundaries AI-inspired/co-generated digital art.

At the core of QUBIT AI is the revolutionary potential of quantum computing. This avant-garde technology, characterized by quantum superposition and entanglement, introduces novel creative avenues for artists. Barreto and Perissinotto articulate this paradigm shift in their curatorial text, emphasizing that quantum computing heralds an unprecedented frontier for both computer science and the arts.

For the first time, an art exhibition features a fully operational Quantum Computer. This cutting-edge inclusion is complemented by two pioneering Brazilian projects: Quantum Photography by Gabriela Barreto Lemos and Sounding Qubits by Eduardo Reck Miranda. Lemos’ work explores the visual possibilities inherent in quantum phenomena, while Miranda's installation translates the enigmatic behaviors of qubits into an auditory experience.

While quantum computing represents a nascent technological revolution, synthetic artificial intelligence is already reshaping artistic landscapes. Synthetic art, produced through AI in collaboration with human creativity, parallels the radical shifts of early modernity, offering new methods of creation across diverse media.

The exhibition's synthetic art section is divided into four thematic areas: Sound Synthetics, Aesthetic Synthetics, Cinematic Synthetics, and Architectural Synthetics. One of the standout installations, INTERATOR, is a three-dimensional cinema without VR glasses. This immersive experience allows viewers to navigate a space filled with simultaneous synthetic video projections, creating an interactive dialogue between the audience and the art.

Highlighted artists within Sound Synthetics include Dennis Schöneberg, whose works such as Bodydub and Transparenza blend visual and auditory stimuli to craft a multisensory narrative. The Spanish collective Iskarioto's dystopian AI films, paired with AI-generated music, further push the envelope of what synthetic art can achieve.

QUBIT AI’s interactive installations invite visitors to become active participants in the art. Klaus Obermaier's EGO uses the concept of alienation from psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to distort the viewer's reflection, examining the tension between reality and symbolism. "The Forgettable Art Machine" places the visitor at the nexus of art and technology, turning each interaction into a personalized masterpiece.

Elizabeth Kolbert's influence is evident in Speculative Evolution, Prototype 1, an AI-driven simulator that allows visitors to create new species within a speculative ecosystem. Marc Vilanova’s Cascade immerses viewers in the hidden frequencies of waterfalls, transforming auditory experiences into a sensory exploration of environmental soundscapes.

Seph Li's Everything Before, Everything After transforms collective touch into a dynamic digital painting, capturing the fluidity of interaction in a visual symphony. Holly Herndon’s AI voice model, Holly+, stars in the music video Jolene, featuring Sam Rolfes, which showcases the capabilities of synthetic performers and their impact on contemporary music.

Complementing QUBIT AI, the FILE LED Show 2024 illuminates Fiesp's facade with innovative creations from USP Visual Arts Course and IED São Paulo students. Under the guidance of Dr. Silvia Laurentiz and Daniel Grizando, these collaborations highlight the interdisciplinary nature of design and the transformative power of university partnerships

QUBIT AI at FILE 2024 is not merely an exhibition; it is a visionary journey into the future of art. By integrating quantum computing and synthetic AI, it challenges and expands our understanding of creativity, inviting us to explore the uncharted territories where art and technology converge.

LINK: FILE 2024: QUIBIT AI

EVENT: IP YUK-YIU'S LEVEL 66 - THE ARCADE PROJECT (JULY 28-AUGUST 4 2024, HONG KONG)

 

 IP YUK-YIU'S LEVEL 66 - THE ARCADE PROJECT

The Box Freespace

West Kowloon Cultural District 18

Museum Drive Kowloon, Hong Kong

Ip Yuk-yiu’s latest venture, LEVEL 66 – The Arcade Project, transforms The Box into an immersive theatre experience where the boundaries between gameplay and performance blur seamlessly. Known for his innovative integration of computer games into artistic practice, Ip Yuk-yiu once again challenges conventional narratives by inviting the audience to become active participants in a dynamic, interactive environment.

LEVEL 66 – The Arcade Project is not merely a performance; it is a participatory theatre experience where the audience steps into a human arcade game lab. The project presents a liminal space, an ambiguous midpoint in a convoluted and possibly manipulated process, where participants are faced with various scenarios and actions. The central question posed to each player is deceptively simple: to play or not to play.

This intriguing premise serves as a vehicle for exploring deeper themes. The project utilizes game mechanics as both method and metaphor, dissecting the interplay of choice, agency, and the inherent conflicts within a structured yet unpredictable system. By engaging with these scenarios, participants confront the underlying mechanisms of control and decision-making, mirroring the complexities of real-world interactions.

Developed in collaboration with students, teachers, and graduates from the School of Theatre and Entertainment Arts at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, alongside the Technical and Production Team at West Kowloon Cultural District, LEVEL 66 – The Arcade Project epitomizes a collective effort in pushing the boundaries of experimental performance. This collaboration enriches the project, incorporating diverse perspectives and expertise, and fostering an environment where creativity and technology coalesce.

LEVEL 66 – The Arcade Project is presented under the aegis of TechBox, a collaborative platform established by West Kowloon Cultural District (WestK) and the School of Theatre and Entertainment Arts at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. TechBox is dedicated to merging the realms of media art and theatre design, encouraging experimental creations within a technological context.

IP Yuk-Yiu is an acclaimed experimental filmmaker, media artist, art educator, and independent curator. His diverse body of work spans experimental films, live performances, media installations, and video games. These creations have been widely exhibited at prominent international venues and festivals, including the European Media Art Festival, New York Film Festival (Views from the Avant-Garde), the Image Festival, FILE Festival, VideoBrasil, Transmediale, NTT ICC, ZKM, and the WRO Media Art Biennale. With over two decades of curatorial experience in film, video, and media art, IP Yuk-Yiu is a pivotal figure in the contemporary art scene. He is the founder of the art.ware project, an independent curatorial initiative dedicated to promoting new media art in Hong Kong. His efforts have significantly contributed to the visibility and appreciation of media art within the region. Currently, IP Yuk-Yiu serves as an Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His recent artistic endeavors explore hybrid creative forms that draw inspiration from cinema, video games, and contemporary media art practices. His innovative approach and substantial contributions to the field were recognized in 2019 when he was awarded the Artist of the Year (Media Arts) by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

LINK: LEVEL 66 – The Arcade Project

LINK: Ip Yuk-yiu

EVENT: ZHOU YAN'S CLOUD 9 (MAY 25 -JULY 7 2024, BEIJING, CHINA)

Zhou Yan, Blind Field (video still),
2022–2024, interactive video installation, real time, image
courtesy of the artist and SPURS Gallery

Zhou Yan, a Beijing-born artist with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, is renowned for his experimental approach, blending video installations, sculptures, paintings, and interactive media. His practice often interrogates the relational dynamics between individuals and collectives, delving into the subtleties of causality and interdependence. In Cloud 9, running from May 25 to July 7, 2024 at SPURS Gallery, Beijing, Zhou amplifies this exploration by leveraging video game engine technology to create real-time video installations that challenge viewers' perceptions and interactions.

The centerpiece of the exhibition, Blind Field (2022–2024), epitomizes Zhou's innovative use of technology. Inspired by his experience in an MRI scanner, the installation invites the audience into a simulated environment where their movements alter the visual narrative. By stepping on an interactive pedal, viewers disrupt the video imagery, evoking a sense of restricted vision and prompting reflections on the limits of perception and knowledge. This piece underscores Zhou's ability to translate personal anxiety into a universal commentary on human experience.

Cloud 9 is a testament to Zhou's capacity to transform his personal pandemic experiences into profound artistic expressions. The animation installation Trophy (2024) mirrors the triumphant display of video game achievements, using three short animations to symbolize the erasure of process and the finality of completion. In contrast, Shortcut (2024) revives the journey, drawing from Zhou’s bouldering experiences to scatter remnants of intense physical activity throughout the gallery. These works encapsulate the dichotomy of finality and continuity, resonating with the fragmented nature of pandemic life.

Zhou Yan, Trophy 3, 2024, GIF
animation, acrylic, LCD screen, 30 x 21 cm, image courtesy of the artist and SPURS Gallery

Zhou Yan, Trophy 2, 2024, GIF
animation, acrylic, LCD screen, 30 x 21 cm, image courtesy of the artist and SPURS Gallery

The exhibition also features Endless Waiting (2024), a golden sculpture that captures the monotony and anticipation of the pandemic period. Nothing (2024), an assemblage of outdoor functional fabric, and Trap (2024), a video work with intermittent lights, further illustrate Zhou's meticulous attention to the mundane and overlooked aspects of modern life. By elevating these “dull, unimportant, and negligible” elements, Zhou imbues them with significant artistic value, inviting viewers to reconsider their own experiences and memories.

Zhou Yan, Blind Field (installation view)
2022–2024, interactive video installation, real time, image
courtesy of the artist and SPURS Gallery

Cloud 9 also reflects Zhou’s skepticism towards societal systems and his quest to unravel their operations. This critical perspective is woven into his works, which often dissect the tension between elitism and anti-intellectualism, a theme that has become more pronounced in the aftermath of the global pandemic. Zhou's art becomes a medium through which he disentangles his personal emotions and life experiences, presenting them as inquiries into the mechanisms of society.

Zhou Yan, born in Beijing, received his BFA in Visual Communication from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His artistic practice explores the interrelations and dependencies between individuals and collectives, focusing on minute details and causality through various media, including video installations, gaming, and artist books. Zhou's work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions such as "Cloud 9" (2024) at SPURS Gallery, Beijing, "Lazarus" (2022) at Click Ten Art Space, and "Pale Fire" (2020) at SPURS Gallery. His group exhibitions include "Motion Is Action—35 Years of Chinese Media Art" (2023) and "Art’s Language, Artists’ Game" (2022). He has also participated in screenings like the 29th Chicago Underground Film Festival (2022) and the 65th International Film Festival Oberhausen (2019). Zhou has received several awards, including the 2023 “RanRan” Young Artist Prize, “The Exploration Award,” and a nomination for the 2020 AAC Young Artist of the Year Award. His artist books are part of the Joan Flash Artist Book Collection in Chicago.

LINK: SPURS gallery

EVENT: 2GIRLS1COMP (JULY 5 - 18 2024, ONLINE)

Dancing Plague

digital video (1920 x 800), color, sound, 6’ 29”, 2024, Switzerland/Italy

created by 2girls1comp

In Dancing Plague, a mod for Grand Theft Auto V, the game’s traditionally gendered choreography is subverted, forcing every male NPC to dance feverishly whenever the player holds the H key. This intervention spotlights the inherent gender biases within the game’s animation system, where dance moves are primarily designed for female performers, often objectified as sex workers. By redirecting these choreographies to male characters, the mod disrupts the rigid gender binaries coded into the game, creating a spectacle where masculinity is both liberated and challenged. Interestingly, the male NPCs’s hypersexualized dance is mostly ignored by the female characters. Such an outcome becomes a playful and potent critique of the game’s inherent gender politics. To enhance the mod’s immersive experience, Azu Tiwaline, a French Tunisian musician known for blending contemporary electronic music with sub-Saharan trance traditions, was commissioned to create the soundtrack. Her work underscores the mod’s themes of ritual, trance, and liberation, providing a sonic backdrop that deepens the critique of gendered biases in digital spaces.

2girls1comp is a modding duo founded in 2023 by Marco De Mutiis (Italy, 1983) and Alexandra Pfammatter (Switzerland, 1993). Their work changes the logic of video games as an act of creative counter-play, revealing the social and economic fabric in which they are immersed: from reclaiming global digital infrastructures to commenting on free labor within the capitalist ideologies of the gaming industry, to showcasing the way play can influence its subjects through its mechanics. Their projects are distributed within the gaming and modding community, as well as cultural and artistic contexts.

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GAME ART: OLIVERY PAYNE’S CRUST SHMUP (2023)

Safe Crackers Entertainment, CRUST SHMUP, 2023
Custom arcade cabinet on cinder blocks with customized controller and stool
Software: CRUSH SHMUP 2023, 8 minutes, made in Unity
30 ¾ x 31 ½ x 20 ½ in / 78.11 x 80 x 52.07 cm

Oliver Payne latest creation is titled CRUST SHMUP, an innovative video game, housed within a modified amp cabinet complete with a custom controller and drum stool, inviting gallery visitors to experience a unique blend of arcade gameplay and crust punk aesthetics. CRUST SHMUP draws inspiration from Napalm Death’s seminal album SCUM (1987), translating its anarchic spirit into a pixelated, black-and-white world reminiscent of gritty gig posters. Players navigate through relentless waves of enemies using missiles shaped like anarchy symbols, set against a backdrop of looping, bleak landscapes. Unlike traditional shoot 'em up games, CRUST SHMUP subverts norms by rewarding players for pacifism—offering extra lives for evading rather than engaging enemies. This inversion challenges players to navigate levels through evasion and stealth, reflecting themes of resistance and nihilism prominent in crust punk culture. The work was presented at Overduin & Co gallery in Los Angeles between May 11 – June 8, 2024. The exhibition featured collaborative artworks by Safe Crackers Entertainment, including silkscreens and banners, alongside individual pieces by Oliver Payne and Brennan Stalford. A live performance of the game’s intense sound, by Scott Eastwood and Kern Haug accompanied the exhibition’s opening.

Oliver Payne (b. 1977, London) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received his BFA from Kingston University of Fine Art in London. Solo exhibitions have been organized by Nanzuka Underground in Tokyo, Meredith Rosen Gallery in New York, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York, Herald St in London, Frederico Vavassori in Milan, Aishonanzuka in Hong Kong, and 356 Mission in Los Angeles. Payne’s work has been exhibited internationally at the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Kunsthalle Zurich, The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo, MoMA PS1 in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Payne’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Tate Britain in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo. Payne is also the publisher of Safe Crackers fanzine, and organizer of a series of performances titled, "Chill Out" in which he requires all mobile phone and internet systems to be turned off in order to allow the public to immerse in a listening session for “Chill Out,” the concept album by late-80s British house band KLF. The last iteration of “Chill Out” was hosted by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

LINK: CRUST SHMUP (all images courtesy of Overdoing & CO)

PROJECT: THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S GUIDE TO LOS SANTOS

In this video, Marco De Mutiis and Matteo Bittanti introduce The Photographer's Guide to Los Santos, an online companion to the eponymous exhibition which took place in the context of Fotofestival Lenzburg between May 22 and June 23 2024 in Lenzburg, Switzerland.

The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos is several things at once.

Firstly, it’s a curated archive and expanding resource center documenting the most significant artistic projects created with Grand Theft Auto V in the past decade.

Secondly, it an educational project, introducing students to virtual photography practices through a thematic overview and a series of hands-on exercises.

Thirdly, as an "how to guide", it provides a series of manuals intended to photography and media arts students interested in experimenting with the game.

This online resource currently collects nine projects created by international artists working with Grand Theft Auto V, that is, 2girls1comp, Alan Butler, Raphael Brunk, COLL.EO, Mattia Dagani Rio, Elizabeth Desintaputri, Claire Hentschker, Mascha Negri, and Georgie Roxby Smith, which were all featured in the very first themed exhibition.

The repository is expected to expand substantially over the next few months.

In this video, the curators discuss the nine notable works currently featured in the online archive.

Explore the The Photographer's Guide to Los Santos