2002 - 2003

The use of 3-D space in online video games (Rez and Zone of the Enders are among my favorites) is truly incredible to me. The experience of being drawn into that space is almost tactile, the bright acidic colors and sharp angles aiding in the heightening of an experience that is already hyperreal. While there are definitely futuristic or fantastical elements to these games, they remain grounded in a sense of reality that seems to me to work by appealing to perceptions of space and figure shaped by particular genres in the history of painting. In fact, as I looked at these games, I became increasingly interested in the ways in which they engaged with and also extended a certain spatial sensibility established and expressed through the genre of landscape painting, and a sensitivity to gesture, personality and general poise, through the tradition of portrait painting. My paintings during this period represent investigations of the meeting of these historical genres and video game technology as they shape our experience of shape and figure. The change from the oval to the rectangular frame is meant to reinforce this reference to historical painting. I drew on paintings by Bruegel, Velazquez, Goya, and Joachim Patinir and paired them with particular games and digital techniques. I reinterpreted/transcribed the historical imagery by presenting it in a pixelated format on the canvas, the squares of color applied as flately as possible to mimic the flatness of the screen. Alternatively, the video game imagery was translated into pigment colors and textured acrylic mediums. The union of these two forms focused on the way they form a continuum of traditions of visual representation that shape how we perceive and inhabit space, experience movement in it, and, ultimately, how it organizes our relations to others.

"Digital Landscapes: 1562/2002" Exhibited at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, 2003