Hydeon’s paintings look like screenshots from a video game that doesn’t exist but probably should. Drawing heavily on the visual grammar of open-world video games and fantasy roleplay games – itemized figures, overbuilt landscapes, symbolic clutter – his recent body of work offers not so much a critique as a recontextualization: what happens when the logic of digital environments is reprocessed through the materiality of paint.
The characters populating Hydeon’s worlds are rendered with the poise of third-person avatars: helmeted, armed, affectless. Their function is unclear – mercenary, pilgrim, bystander – but they’re always ready. One figure leans against a sleek motorcycle, shotgun slung over one shoulder, while a shattered Ionic column hints at a forgotten civilization or a loading error. The backdrop is all gradients and excess: turquoise sea, peach-pink sky, scattered islands fading into a horizon that could be ancient Greece or a rendered approximation of it.
There’s a flatness here, not in technique but in affect. The characters are never emoting. They wait. They idle. The viewer is cast in the role of absent player, scanning the terrain for triggers or quests that never arrive. Hydeon has internalized the logic of game worlds without inheriting their goals: there are no missions, no boss fights, no lore dumps. Instead, there’s just space: dense with cues, barren of resolution.
In Ariel in the Ruins (2024) a lone surfer rides a crystalline wave between neoclassical ruins that jut from the sea like misplaced assets. The architecture is overgrown with flora that feels more procedurally generated than organic. A drone’s-eye view reveals an elegant geometry – arches, columns, islands – that resembles both landscape painting and level design. The result is seductively hollow: form without function, combat gear with nowhere to go.
Hydeon’s sensibility leans heavily on the aesthetics of customization. Everything looks equipped: armor, weaponry, mounts. In Signal Reacher (2024), a lone sentry stands atop a cylindrical plinth surveying an unbroken expanse of dunes. The pose is iconic, almost archetypal, equal parts RPG loading screen and survival sim box art. The logic is visual rather than narrative. This is a game frozen at character select, an action paused indefinitely.
His surfaces are matte, almost deadpan, resisting painterly flourish in favor of tight control. Visual clutter stands in for narrative density – plants, gadgets, relics, props – though nothing is ever explained. It’s all set dressing, and that’s the point. Hydeon’s work stages an archaeology of interface: what happens when the semiotics of gameplay – inventory, terrain, avatar – are decoupled from interaction.
In Drone Team, a trio of figures congregate in a dense underbrush beside a neon-green sport bike, red visors glowing. A surveillance drone lies inert between them. No action, no dialogue – just presence. Hydeon traffics in frozen scenarios, calibrated mise-en-scènes that hint at story while refusing progression.
If earlier painters staged allegory through religious or mythological scenes, Hydeon does so through the residue of digital environments. The references – video game HUDs, asset packs, ruined temples, drone optics – accumulate into a post-genre iconography where medievalism, military futurism, and low fantasy converge without hierarchy. What links them isn’t narrative but orientation.
Everything is designed to be viewed from a distance, controlled, rotated, or scanned.
Hydeon's most recent works were presented under the aegis of Adrift in the Corners of Time, at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York, through 1 February 2025.
His most recent drawings are on display here.
Watch a video interview with the artist
Ian Ferguson (AKA Hydeon) is a contemporary artist, designer, and musician (Vonson) living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He was born in 1985 in National City, CA and grew up in San Diego. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Graphic Design from the Art Institute of California – San Diego in 2006. Ferguson’s work is an expression of observations and visual memoirs from his life experience. The characters, architecture, and imagery used in his work are all conduits for telling stories and sharing ideas. Ferguson’s work is largely inspired by: ancient civilizations, baroque, gothic, and victorian era architectural movements, medieval, folk, outsider art, ancient myths, fairy tales, and ideas of consciousness. His illustrative style and subjects form together in an effort to inspire introspection and employ aesthetic harmony.
LINK: HYDON (Ian Ferguson) (All images courtesy of the artist and Ricco/Maresca gallery)
