The Hole's Latest Group Show Explores the Art of Video Game Aesthetics
When art grows up on boss fights, XP and open-worlds.
Over the last several years, contemporary art widened a curious eye toward video games. More than a pastime, these games have helped shape how we feel, understand and interact with the world around us – both online and off.
A new group show at The Hole in Tribeca brings this influence into sharp focus. Titled LFG, the exhibition features a lineup of 13 international artists, each interested in gaming as a visual language and cultural force. Together, they ask: what happens when art grows up on boss fights, glitches and open-worlds?
Circling Kévin Bray’s iconic animated sculpture, 4exs, the exhibition offers a multi-medium survey: Gao Hang brings a health kit, a classic in-game item, into pixelated reality; while Ksawery Komputery and Luke Murphy evoke the glitchy feedback with code and light-based works. Other artists explore identity in avatars, as in Bezimienny’s warrior princess and Bryant Girsch‘s Battle Boy. Janne Schimmel, presents a playable work, taking the form of an old Game Boy woven into a metal and crystal sculpture, completed with a custom soundtrack composed by the artist.
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Originally shorthand for “Looking For Group” in online gaming communities, LFG has evolved into the more widely-used “Let’s F*cking Go” – the battle cry of players rallying for a quest, raid, or full-on assault. Highlighting the unique social aspect of this world, the gallery wrote: “Whether storming a dungeon to loot rare armor, reviving your squadmate mid-firefight in Call of Duty, dancing on the corpses of your enemies in Fortnite, syncing getaway cars for a casino heist in GTA or just grinding XP in the desert while getting made fun of – we have found our teams.”
“This show is a glimpse of what that path might look like – artists using the tools, textures and myths of gaming not to escape reality but to reprogram it. It’s messy, ambitious and unresolved, like any good game still in beta.”
The exhibition is now on view in New York through May 24.
The Hole Tribeca
86 Walker St,
New York, NY 10013
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