GAMESCENES

GAME ART: FELIX BEAUDRY'S FLYING LESSONS (THE GLOB MOTHER, 2023)

Felix Beaudry, The Glob Mother and Lazy Boy, 2023, Knit tapestry with woven couch, 88 x 50 x 60 inches approx

Felix Beaudry, Flying Lessons, 2023, Knit tapestry on duvet cover and gromets, 90 x 82 inches approx

Beaudry's evocative 2023 wall tapestry Flying Lessons from the acclaimed Glob Mother series presents a dramatic scene atop a rugged mountain cliff. At the heart of the portrayal stands a solitary, light peach-hued figure with a textured, rippled body and solemn expression. Encircling the creature are three striking magenta-colored beings - one precariously positioned over the cliff edge, as if being thrown, while two others look on from either side.

The central peach figure exudes a sense of otherworldliness, evoking parallels to the archetypal final boss encountered in epic video game journeys. In climatic boss battles, the hero at last confronts a formidable adversary representing an amplified embodiment of their own suppressed flaws and fears. Beaudry's tapestry seems to capture this moment of ultimate personal challenge and reckoning. The confrontation symbolically encapsulates the hero facing their shadow self in heightened, surreal form.

The tense scene depicted in Flying Lessons becomes a metaphorical representation of the game-ending inner battle. Confronting and overcoming one's shadow self represents the paramount triumph - a profound moment of growth and liberation. By weaving this pivotal motif into the tapestry's mystical imagery, Beaudry creates a visual ode to the introspective journey of self-actualization. The victor in this reckoning has taken flight from the cliff edge, soaring freely at last. Video games inspire art-making in the most unexpected ways.

Felix Beaudry (b. 1996 Berkeley, CA) is a textile artist based in Kingston, NY. Felix graduated with a BFA from RISD in 2018. He works primarily with his industrial knitting machine; making tapestry and sculpture.  Congenital Knot at SITUATIONS was his first solo show in New York City. Recent exhibitions include And You Will Shine and Shine at Golestani Gallery, 2021 (Düsseldorf, Germany) Rocking Rookies at Tatjana Pieters, 2019 (Gent, Belgium), and Fresh Fruit at Situations, 2018 (New York, NY)

LINK: Felix Beaudry

GAME ART: LIZ CRAFT'S MS. AMERICA (2023)

Liz Craft, Ms. America, Images courtesy Centre d’édition contemporaine, Genève. Photos by Sandra Pointet.

 

Liz Craft's 2023 Ms. America exhibition at the Centre d'édition contemporaine (Geneva, Switzerland) between November 5, 2022 and February 3, 2023 reimagined the iconic video game character Pac-Man as a commentary on contemporary American culture. Comprised of approximately twenty figurines in varying sizes, all modeled after the classic 1980s arcade icon, the installation transforms Pac-Man into a metaphor for the endless cycle of consumption and addiction.

The bright yellow forms are reminiscent of modern emojis, linking gaming's past to our emoji-filled present. Unlike the aggressive themes of late 1970s arcades like Taito's Space Invaders, Pac-Man was designed around a playful concept aimed at attracting a broad audience across gender lines. Yet beneath the harmless, pizza-shaped character who endlessly gobbles pellets lays a narrative of unsatisfiable hunger, dissatisfaction, and perpetual failure.

Craft portrays Pac-Man as a symbol of compulsive consumerism and opioid addiction - forever chasing temporary satisfaction, trapped in a maze fueled by "magic gums" (symbolic of sugar, pharmaceuticals and other vices). Her work critiques the capitalist mantra of "always more, always bigger" and the blurring lines between legal and illegal drugs. The Pac-Man figures don their signature yellow hue but with exaggerated, almost grotesque heads, adorned with large red bows and cloaked in black tunics. Displayed together, they oscillate between a wailing choir and furious techno-pagan cult, evoking a sense of desperation and chaos. The overall effect suggests a collective plea for liberation from the consumerist prison Craft depicts. America is a toxic mix of dopamine and ketamine.

By transforming an iconic figure of gaming and '80s nostalgia into a cultural critique, the installation prompts audiences to question assumptions about consumption, addiction, and the elusive nature of satisfaction. Craft effectively employs the maze-dweller Pac-Man as a warning, cautioning against the traps of endlessly chasing temporary highs on an increasingly dark and ominous path, one that the Sackler family, for instance, efficiently travelled, killing more than 500,000 Americans on the way.

There's something ominous, dark, and horrifying about Craft's Ms. America.

This is because Ms. America is America, Craft seems to suggest.

Liz Craft (1970, Los Angeles) lives and works in Berlin. Her exhibitions have included those at the Real Fine Arts Gallery, New York, Truth and Consequences, Geneva, Jenny’s, Los Angeles, and at the Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt between 2015 and 2022. Her work has been presented in various solo exhibitions, such as: Cavern, at the Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt (2022); Do You Love Me Now? at the Kunsthalle und Kunstmuseum,Bremerhaven (2022); Escape From New York at the baby Company, New York (2019); QUERELA at the Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon (2019); Watching You Watching Me at Jenny’s Gallery, London (2018). She has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions: Kreislaufprobleme at Croy Nielsen, Vienna (2019), Tranted Love at Confort Moderne, Poitiers (2018); Sueurs Chaudes at South Way Studio, Marseille (2017); Medusa. Bijoux et tabous at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris (2017)

LINK: Ms. America

GAME ART: ISABELLE FRANCES MCGUIRE'S LOOP (2023)

Isabelle Frances McGuire, Bust2{“Assassins Creed NPC”, “Normandy”, “New United States Flag”}, 2023. detail

Isabelle Frances McGuire, Bust1{“Elvis”, “Modern WarFare II NVG”}, 2023

animatronic Elvis bust, night vision goggles, wood, 66 x 17 x 20 inches, 167.64 x 43.18 x 50.8 cm

Isabelle Frances McGuire, SelfPortrait2 {“Ghost”}, 2023

PLA plastic, fabric, children’s tactical vest, cord, leather boots, metal, children’s knee and elbow pads, 49 x 29 x 24 inches, 124.46 x 73.66 x 60.96 cm

"In LOOP, Isabelle Frances McGuire fabricates icons of video games, television shows, and American popular culture to create a disorienting playground of re-enactments. While re-enactments are typically meant to honor the integrity of the past or reproduce a figure of fact or fiction, McGuire abandons the art of faithful imitation in favor of animatronic chimeras of readymade repetition.

On Level 1, the viewer is greeted by three sculptures sitting on wooden plinths modeled after those used in ballistics testing. Sitting at 5’ 6”, the plinths position the sculptures roughly at eye level with the artist. The viewer first encounters Bust2{“Assassins Creed NPC”, “Normandy”, “New United States Flag”}, a wax model of a non-playable character from the Assassin's Creed video game franchise. Monstrously unblinking, the chain-mail adorned bust stares the viewer down with the eyeballs of a berserk mutant. While static, a motion sensor embedded in the head of the bust triggers a sound bite from Call of Duty: WWII, depicting the Allies landing at Normandy. The muffled chorus of mortar shells and machine gun fire complements the New United States of America (NUSA) flag visible under the chain mail, which is taken from the dystopian future state of the multimedia Cyberpunk franchise. With its back to the assassin, a readymade Elvis Presley animatronic moves with mechanical jerks and gyrations.

Titled Bust1{“Elvis”, “Modern Warfare II NVG”}, the slowly deteriorating bust spits readymade hallmark quotes in an endless cycle of middle-American sentimentality. The ice blue irises of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll are obfuscated by a fully functional pair of night vision goggles modeled after the in-game equipment of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. What should serve as a novelty for gawking onlookers instead renders the viewer an unwilling target of tactical convulsions." (continues) (Max Hart, curator)

read the full text

Isabelle Frances McGuire (b. 1994 Austin, Texas) lives and works in Chicago, IL. McGuire received a BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent solo and duo exhibition include LOOP, King’s Leap, NYC (2023); Bailey Connolly & Isabelle Frances McGuire, Scerben, Berlin, Germany (2022); Dedicated to Those Who Continue to Dwell in Lightless Descent, King’s Leap, NYC (2021); Dresses Without Women, Mickey Gallery, Chicago (2020); Snafu, Shitshow, Clusterfuck, Julius Caesar, Chicago (2020); and P**** B**** Arena, Curated by Good Weather held at Et Al., San Francisco (2020). Recent residencies and awards include Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art (2021), Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant (2020), Artist Residency, Latitude Chicago (2019) and Alternative Worksite Residency Program (Founded by Linda Burnham and supported by the Robert Overby Estate) (2018).

Images courtesy of the artists and King's Leap Fine Arts, New York. Photos by Stefany Lazar.

LINK: Isabelle Frances McGuire

LINK: LOOP (April 20 to June 17 2023)

GAME ART: NICHOLAS ALOISIO-SHEARER'S BIG GAME HUNTING (2017)

Nicholas Aloisio-Shearer and Finn Marchant, Big Game Hunting, Bus Projects, 2017

Big Game Hunting examines the disjuncture between the material and the digital and how this separation has engendered an anxiety of the digital. Through the deconstruction and materialisation of fantasy role-playing video games Big Game Hunting interrogates how video games might shape and reflect human emotion, affect and desire.

Nicholas Aloisio-Shearer is an artist and independent curator currently living in Australia whose practice is concerned with the digital conditions of contemporary life. His practice engages with the cultural functions of imaging technologies and examines how networked cultures make use of the history of representation.

LINK: Nicholas Aloisio-Shearer

GAME ART: MARIO MU'S THE SUN, THE MAST OR GRAVITY (2022)

Mario Mu, The Sun, The Mast or Gravity, 2022 (video installation, HD, 7 min. ,wood panels)

Mario Mu has unveiled his latest video creation, titled The Sun, The Mast or Gravity, which delves into the intricate interplay of architecture and decay. This 7-minute film was crafted using the Unity video game engine and draws inspiration from the visionary architectural concepts of 20th-century Yugoslavian architect Vjenceslav Richter, which never came to fruition. At the core of Mu's work lies an intricate neural-like structure constructed from weathered steel cables, seemingly providing the life force for the virtual realm it inhabits. As these cables twist and coil, the surrounding architecture undergoes a mesmerizing metamorphosis. It transitions from an interpretation of Richter's unrealized concrete mast intended for the Yugoslavian pavilion to the haunting remnants of the National Museum of Aleppo in Syria, a casualty of the ongoing civil conflict.

As Mu writes in his artistic statement, this work strives to redefine our perception of space by merging the constructed environment with the echoes of destruction. Mu translates Richter's modernist visual language into a novel digital domain, the language of video games, skillfully arranging geometric forms and images into intellectually stimulating configurations. The result is a contemplative and cyclical exploration of the delicate equilibrium between construction and decay. Mu's video underscores the fragility of even the most ambitious architectural endeavors, as they ultimately succumb to disarray. Yet, from these remnants, new forms emerge, perpetuating the eternal cycle.

The Sun, The Mast or Gravity is the latest installment in Mu's. ongoing artistic venture, Sites of Encounter. It represents a groundbreaking utilization of video game technology to address key questions concerning human progress versus entropy. As Mu continues to refine his digital world-building prowess, anticipation builds around the possibilities his future works may unveil within the realm of new media art.

Mario Mu is a Berlin-based visual artist and director known for his work on research projects often presented as extended gaming platforms. His creative practice spans game design, 3D animation, performance, sound, and drawing. Mu holds a BFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia, and an MFA from the University of Arts in Berlin, Germany.Between 2016 and 2017, Mu was actively involved with the Research Center for Proxy Politics. Since 2017, he has been an author and collaborator on a series of events held at various prestigious venues, including the TAP-Théâtre auditorium de Poitiers in France, V2 Rotterdam in the Netherlands, MGLC Ljubljana in Slovenia, MAAT Lisbon in Portugal, Play Co London in the UK, Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and several locations in Berlin, Germany such as Ufer Studios, Galerie gr_und, and Silent Green, among others. He has also participated in events in Zagreb, Croatia, including MSU, Pogon, and GMK. Mario Mu's digital and online projects involve collaborations with notable entities like AVYSS, Mizuha, The Killscreen, The Carillon, BoCA Biennial, Milan Machinima Festival, Gamescenes, Itch.io, Gestalten Publishing, FACT Magazine, Wrong Biennale, The School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe, STYLY, Lima Sky, Pivilion, and Inquiry Inc. His multidisciplinary work has made a significant impact on the intersection of art, technology, and gaming.

LINK: Mario Mu

EVENT: HUIDI XIANG, WHEN HELD PROPERLY, (MARCH 31 - MAY 14 2023, BROOKLYN, NYC)

 

when held properly,

Huidi Xiang

March 31 - May 14, 2023​

Tutu Gallery

Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, New York City

 

Huidi Xiang's debut solo exhibition, aptly titled when held properly, offers a delightful exploration of video game aesthetics and pop culture references. Drawing inspiration from iconic titles such as Animal Crossing, Super Smash Bros, and Super Mario Bros, Xiang presents a series of colorful and conceptually engaging works that blur the lines between digital and physical realms. At the heart of the exhibition lies a playful homage to Super Mario Bros' infamous Shoe Goomba, as a green boot takes center stage in one of the exhibition's most visually striking pieces. Through Xiang's masterful use of color, texture, and form, the humble shoe is transformed into a vibrant symbol of pop culture iconography, inviting viewers to reflect on the social and cultural significance of video games and their enduring impact on contemporary art. April Z, Tutu's gallery curator, offers a profound and insightful analysis (see below) of the multiple layers of meaning present in the exhibited artworks.

 

​press release

Tutu Gallery announces sculptor Huidi Xiang’s first solo exhibition in New York: when held properly, opening Friday, March 31, 2023, with 6 new sculptures made this year tailored for the gallery’s home base. Charting the journey of her ongoing immigration and introspection on her role as a minority female in late capitalism, Huidi uses a mixture of symbols from video games and popular culture as her language to describe how affective labor metamorphoses into physical and internal harm by the larger system we exist under. 

This body of work was initially conceived from Huidi’s preoccupation with Shoe Goomba, a shoe-wearing, mushroom-shaped monster character in Super Mario Bros. A late addition to the game, Shoe Goomba can be defeated by the standard jump move, or, a stealth attack from below which then grants Mario possession of A Goomba’s Shoe (also known as The Shoe), allowing him to safely move through spiked grounds and monsters. Extended to real-life living in New York, putting on a good pair of shoes prompts a mental switch from nesting to facing the outside world, provides comfort on the go, and can even be used to deceive others about the wearer’s socio-economic class.

Huidi Xiang, when held properly, Tutu Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, installation shot (Courtesy of the Artist)

Huidi draws parallels between game simulation, animation, and immigrant assimilation as analogies for many survival strategies around the vicious cycle of personal caretaking, growth, and the eventual weaponization of a person. In power-up take-out, The Shoe, life-sized and spray-painted black, becomes the container for an enlarged, standing plastic knife, a normally frail gadget she cuts takeout food with in between busy work schedules, and, as she jokingly put it, perhaps the most powerful gear readily available for fighting. Such hidden anxiety about a lack of resources in an unfamiliar environment is further signaled by hold my inventory tight and right, a 4’ handmade woodcut board riskily balanced on a silicon banana peel, inspired by the inventory space design in Animal Crossing New Horizons. In order to start building tools which then build furniture and shelters on a deserted island, the player must rely on limited bag space to collect sticks and stones from scratch. A carrier like this, hopefully with a few things already in it, can also be swung to fend for oneself in unforeseen situations.

The multi-use of scarce assets encourages creativity, but also complexes the intention behind every simple act. Leaning against the wall, timbering the dream house embeds a small monitor framed in a shovel, displaying a video collage of Villager (originally a character from Animal Crossing)’s two Movesets in Super Smash Bros. Down special Timber shows the character shoveling to plant a seed, watering it until it becomes a tree, then peculiarly cutting the very tree he had grown in order for it to fall and hit the opponent; final smash Dream Home, he pays a team to build a house around the opponent proceeded by detonating it at the celebration of its completion. The gravity is my best frenemy, a life-sized concrete anvil on a silver chain placed above the mantelpiece, is drawn from props designed for Wile E. Coyote by ACME Corporation in Looney Tunes. A lucky charm to the artist, it enunciates the fanatic mindset that, to be considered worthy, even an instrument to produce weapons must be effective in attacks itself.

Such constant reexamination of straightforward utility, safeguarding merits, and concealed lethality maps an unavoidable disintegration of the singular self. In hare come the glitches, an axe, which can be used to chop wood and warm up the living space, or, to potentially harm domestic partners, merges into the Shoe and turns into the tail of Bugs Bunny, reflecting a disordered amalgamation of worlds, personalities, objects, and functions.

In the flower need no water, a chip-looking white lily in a glass jar pumps water into a basin sourced from Chinatown, which firmly stands on three triangulating concrete shoes, while a small plastic-watering-can-turned-into train loops around the rim. Modeled after Lily of Valley in Animal Crossing New Horizons, this white lily symbolizes the system’s promise of final recognition after one naturalizes by wearing the shoes, learning the language, gathering the resources, avoiding the dangers, making the work, knowing the right people and projecting the power. It is a perpetual motion machine: the water will come from the trophy in the shape of a delicate flower and take care of all things.

April Z, Tutu Gallery

 

Huidi Xiang (b. 1995. Chengdu, China) is a sculptor currently based in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Huidi received her MFA in Art from Carnegie Mellon University in 2021 and her BA in Architecture and Studio Art from Rice University in 2018. In her practice, Huidi makes sculptural objects, installations, and systems to examine world-making processes and the coexistence of multiple contexts and narratives in late capitalism. She uses her work to cultivate alternative narratives to speculate and investigate the usually invisible working mechanism, rules, and power structure hidden behind pop cultural symbols and scenarios. Huidi’s works have been exhibited internationally, including OCAT Biennale at OCT Art & Design Gallery, Shenzhen, China; KAJE in Brooklyn, NY, USA; Lydian Stater in Long Island City, NY, USA; LATITUDE Gallery in New York, NY, USA; Contemporary Calgary in Calgary, Canada; Hive Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China; Miller ICA in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, and more. Huidi has also participated in some artist residencies, including NARS Foundation International Residency Program (2022), ACRE Residency Program (2021), the Millay Colony for the Arts (2020), and Project Row Houses Summer Studios (2016). She is currently an AIM fellow at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

LINK: Huidi Xiang

LINK: when held properly, at Tutu Gallery

EVENT: BRICK GAMES (MARCH 18 - MAY 25 2022, PALMA, SPAIN)

BRICK GAMES

18 March - 25 May, 2022

L21 S’Escorxador
Hermanos García Peñaranda 1A
07010 Palma
Islas Baleares, España

Curated by Francesco Giaveri 

Featured artists: Richard Woods, Dasha Shishkin, Gao Hang, Richie Culver, Eva Fàbregas, Álvaro Gil, Gabriele de Santis, Felix Treadwell, Ryan Browning, Jordi Ribes, Pixy Liao, Rachel Hobkirk, Matthew Feyld, Charline Tyberghein, Sepand Danesh, Grip Face

As Francesco Giaveri explains;

Games are always plural. A game has to be very disappointing to not want to start a new round and then another. The Brick Game video game console that flooded the market in the 90s promised to contain 9999 games. It was probably much less, but it doesn’t matter, without a doubt Tetris was the one that got me hooked, the one I liked the most. Many years later, I still play for long periods of time on airplane trips where they still offer this idle option. I love the paradox of how it works. To advance without advancing. To move up a level, the brick wall has to remain as low as possible, as other bricks progressively fall. If there are gaps in the wall and its height grows too high, until it passes the upper limit of the screen, the game ends. On the contrary, it is a matter of forming one or more lines, from one side to the other, compact and seamless, so that the bricks disappear, thus leaving more space for the others that, in the meantime, continue to fall, each time at a faster and faster speed. At the formal and chromatic level, it is a question of creating unions of independent fragments. Discontinuous unions awaiting the decisive fragment that will appear to resolve and complete the compact and seamless lines.

My favorite piece is Gao Hang's Boy gaze, 2021

GAO HANG, Boy gaze, 2021, Acrylic on canvas. 182.88 x 60.96 cm

L21 Gallery is a project that has continued to evolve over the years since it was founded by Óscar Florit in Palma de Mallorca (Spain) in 2012. At that time, the gallery was committed to the representation of emerging national artists and the experimentation with new exhibition formats. Examples of this were the projects The Envelope, The Window, at the gallery’s venue in Madrid, and the project The Apartment, which was awarded at ARCO 2015. L21 Gallery is currently an international and hybrid project located in two venues in Mallorca: a 450 m2 industrial building in Son Castelló industrial estate that has been hosting the gallery’s exhibition programme since 2016, and a second venue with five exhibition rooms in the city of Palma. These two large spaces allow us to freely develop the different aspects of the project: contemporary art gallery, artists’ residence and production centre (L21 LAB)

LINK: Brick Games

GAME ART: EDDIE LOHMEYER'S ALTAR OF THE BARGAIN BIN (2021)

Eddie Lohmeyer, video installation, found footage, 2021,installation shot at Post/Meta, Arts Warehouse, Delray Beach, FL., August-September 2021. All images and videos courtesy of the Artist

Altar of the Bargain Bin is a projection mapped sculpture that serves as an occult altar constructed from a forgotten cultural trope: cheap, mass-produced PC box games that might have once been found in a typical department store bargain bin. These precariously stacked boxes serve as a kind of physical, tangible glitch; rather, fragmented pop culture forms that mirror the frenetic video patterns overlayed onto their surfaces. Drawing from data moshed anime, retro videogames, horror film trailers, and occult imagery, these projected sequences, and the physical forms they correspond to, simultaneously elicit an intensive hysteria as well as ennui for the mass commodification of cheaply made, bargain PC titles. (text by Eddie Lohmeyer)

Eddie Lohmeyer is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at the University of Central Florida. His research explores aesthetic and technical developments within histories of digital media, with an emphasis on video games and their relationship to the avant-garde. His book Unstable Aesthetics: Game Engines and the Strangeness of Modding is now available through Bloomsbury Press. Using deconstructive approaches such as glitch, physical modifications to hardware, and assemblage, his installations, sculpture, and video have been exhibited both nationally and internationally, most recently at 1308 Gallery at the University of Wisconsin, Ground Level Platform (Chicago, IL), the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg, Russia and the 2021 Milan Machinima Festival.

LINK: Eddie Lohmeyer

REVIEW: RADICAL GAMING AT HEK (WMMNA)

Radical Gaming - Immersion Simulation Subversion

An exhibition curated by Boris Magrini

September 2 - November 14 2021

Opening: Wednesday, 01.09.2021

HeK
House of Electronic Arts Basel
Freilager-Platz 9
CH–4142 Münchenstein/Basel

The international group exhibition Radical Gaming presents a selection of artists who investigate the structures, technologies and aesthetics of a global gaming industry. Their works are characterised by a particularly unconventional approach to employing the immersion and interaction inherent to video games, whose common narratives and stereotypes they subversively undermine.

Artist: Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Leo Castañeda, Sara Culmann, Debbie Ding, Keiken, Lawrence Lek, Mikhail Maksimov, Cassie McQuater, Sahej Rahal, Nicole Ruggiero, Jacolby Satterwhite, Eddo Stern, Theo Triantafyllidis, Miyö Van Stenis, Lu Yang

The best review so far is, unsurprisingly, from We Make Money Not Art. Here's an excerpt:

The interactive experiences of this avant-garde sub-genre also differ from mainstream contemporary gaming: instead of being purely adrenaline-fuelled, the rules of engagement involve meditative states, involvement of multiple senses, modified controllers, etc. They deviate from what the industry normally offers/sells. But that doesn’t mean that they are not fun, in their own, strange ways.

Read more at WMMNA

Theo Triantafyllidis, Pastoral, (Video Game), 2019. Exhibition view at HeK (House of electronic Arts Basel), Photo: Franz Wamhof

LINK: Radical Gaming

EVENT: THEO TRIANTAFYLLIDIS, RADICALIZATION PIPELINE (JUNE 3 - SEPTEMBER 25 2021, MILAN)

Radicalization Pipeline

Theo Triantafyllidis

June 3–September 25, 2021

Eduardo Secci Milano

Via Bernardino Zenale, 3, 

Milano, 20123 Italy

 

Press release:

For this new body of works, Theo Triantafyllidis draws inspiration from video games and recent events of civil disorder in America. Looking at phenomena such as the rise of QAnon, the artist suggests connections between gamification, fantasy, and political radicalization. The gallery space brings together a series of ceramic weapons. These dark glazed stoneware works are adorned with decorative details like tennis over grip tapes, hair extensions and laser-cut acrylics. With titles such as Chadslayer, SnowflakeSkorcherand, Stormbringer, they are reminiscent of the exaggerated forms often seen in video games and extremist ideologies which the internet culture has accelerated.

The ceramic surfaces reflect the light from a large display playing Radicalization Pipeline, a Live Simulation piece that runs on a gaming PC. Two seemingly endless hordes clash into a violent free-for-all, swinging large melee weapons and shouting with distorted voices. A wide range of characters -from citizen militias to fantastical creatures -enter the screen only to kill each other, wave after wave, sinking their virtual bodies slowly into a muddy landscape. The mood occasionally lightens up by the medieval covers of familiar pop songs that complete the soundscape conceived by the composer and sound designer Diego Navarro."

Theo Triantafyllidis, Radicalization Pipeline (excerpt), live simulation, 2021

Theo Triantafyllidis, born in Athens in 1988, lives and works in Los Angeles. The artist builds virtual spaces and interfaces for the human body to inhabit them. He creates complex worlds and systems where the virtual and the physical merge in uncanny, absurd, and poetic ways. They are performances, mixed reality experiences, games and interactive installations. He received a Master of Fine Arts at UCLA Department of Design Media Arts in 2016. Selected solo shows include ‘Pastoral’ at Eduardo Secci, Florence (2019); ‘Role Play’ at Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York (2018); and ‘Pretzel Twist’ at The Breeder, Athens (2017). Among the group exhibitions, ‘World on a Wire’, Hyundai Motor Studio & Rhizome of New Museum, Seoul (2021); Sundance New Frontier Exhibition, Park City, Utah (2020); Athens Biennale: ANTI-, Athens (2018); and Hyper Pavilion, 57thVenice Biennale (2017). Theo Triantafyllidis’s work is currently on display at MEDITERRANEA 19 Young Artists Biennale: School of Waters, San Marino (2021). Among his upcoming exhibitions in 2021, ‘Radical Gaming: Immersion Simulation Subversion’ at House of Electronic Arts Basel and the Augmented Reality Biennale at NRW-Forum Düsseldorf.

All images courtesy of the Artists and Eduardo Secci gallery.

Theo Triantafyllidis

Witchblade, 2021

Glazed Stoneware 31 x 5 cm 12 1/4 x 2 in

LINK: Theo Triantafyllidis

LINK: Theo Triantafyllidis, Radicalization Pipeline at Eduardo Pecci Milano