Is the video game market exploding? Narration, virtuality, community and particular aesthetics: young artists seize the codes. Overview.
“Nothing is true. Everything is allowed “*
The video game is an artistic writing of our time. It covers both a very recognizable general aesthetic and a plurality of graphic universes, which makes it a cultural object in its own right. The young contemporary creation, born at the turn of the 1980s / 1990s, grew up with the first video games available on personal computers and then individual game consoles. It would be surprising if she did not seize on this aesthetic which is so familiar to her, this language born with her.
Video games combine narration, virtuality, communities; he is the spirit of our time. We even speak in the opposite sense of “gamification” of society as the medium and its characteristics are spreading, like a social phenomenon 2.0. This is evidenced by fashion brands that do not hesitate to appropriate their codes (Balenciaga, Coperni, Marine Serre) until the creation of interactive games (Burberry, Louis Vuitton). We could notice that this writing also permeates the other fields of creation, starting with cinema. The Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan didn’t he have something of the game where you are the hero?
With nearly 3 billion users for a market worth 150 billion euros, the video game now has its own exhibitions such as Game Story at the Grand Palais in 2011 or Behind the Game at the Gaîté Lyrique in 2018. In a conservation process avant-garde, MoMA New York completes its collection of games every year.
Video games seem to be an inexhaustible source of creativity, particularly relevant to talking about our time. Now mature, this field of creation is accompanied by innovations (virtual reality headsets, haptic and kinect technologies, etc.) and a clear appropriation by the young generation of contemporary creation. These hybrid works then explore new territories, such as the disturbing dissociation in favor of fantasized avatars or the reappropriation of historical realities.
Discover these young people artists who seized the world of gaming.
Theo Triantafyllidis, born in 1988, lives and works in Los Angeles.
Theo Triantafyllidis builds virtual spaces directly inspired by video games. His expansive and complex worlds study isolation, sexuality and violence. via virtual experiences, augmented reality, games and interactive installations.
In Antigone, the artist devotes himself to a “phygital” work combining a play with video games: the physical merges in a strange, absurd and poetic way with the digital, to speak to us about capitalism and the great societal troubles. With Pastoral, it unveils an infinite rural landscape under the sound of a melodic lute: a romantic ode to freedom in a softer alternate reality.
Theo Triantafyllidis, Antigone, 2019
Ismaël Joffroy, born in 1988, lives and works in Belgium.
In a night assailed by fog, a soldier armed with a Kalashnikov reigns over the city. The film Swatted tells of a time when the border between real and virtual is blurred, or the world loses its footing with existence. The artist plunges us into swatting, cyberstalking, and other abuses such as addiction. In an edifying combination of vector images from a video game and a background sound of interviews with different players, the artist evokes in his short film a sectarian gamification, a mirror of our time. The trailer announces the color: while the image is still raw, an American call for help is broadcast, a young boy has just killed his mother with a gun because she had confiscated her console.
Léa Porré, born in 1996, lives and works in London.
Léa Porré is a young French artist who explores the perspective of French history through a digital critical, mythological and spiritual reading. In his Dear One exhibition, presented by the Virginia Bianchi digital art gallery, the artist revisits the fall of Louis XVI through an interactive journey reminiscent of that of many puzzle video games.
Léa Porré, who likes to shift her gaze, rethinks this event from a royalist angle, causing the monarch to die a martyr. The first act illustrates the event of the regicide himself on a mysterious altar in a bloody and apocalyptic atmosphere; the second act is devoted to the feast, to the celebrations of the King’s sacrifice; to end finally with the morning dispersion of the fragmented body in a third act. Through an unprecedented vision of the monarchy, the work reminds us that Louis XVI was only a man among men, perhaps himself the victim of a social order out of step with his time …
* game slogan Assassin’s Creed
NNFCTN is a strategy agency that identifies aesthetics, subjects, artistic devices of the time in order to think of innovative cultural models and reveal the underlying imaginaries with which brands can identify.
