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Gameplay: Video Games in Contemporary Art Practice
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Around the Coyote Gallery - 1935 ½ W. North Ave. | |
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The Around the Coyote Gallery is excited to announce our July group show, Gameplay: Video Games in Contemporary Art Practice, curated by Jessica Cochran. Gameplay is an exhibition that addresses the innovative ways that artists incorporate video gaming technology and strategies into their work as a means to explore themes such as place, identity, community, politics, and resistance. Gameplay features an exciting lineup of Chicago and international artists including: the British collective Igloo, Stacia Yeapanis, Danielle Martin, Matthew Board, Andrew Bucksbarg, Alex Paik, Jenny Chowdhury, Megan Boesen, Krista Wortendyke, Brent Gustafson, and Chris Reilly. Video games are at once associated with both interactivity and seclusion. Through the agency of the internet, online gaming has become a participatory source of virtual interaction with online communities; however, online gaming can also be considered a solitary retreat into a virtual utopia--lands in which the empowered user can manipulate, destroy, and engender. The word "gameplay" refers to the creative, resistant, or artful manipulation of video games by users. It can be said that "gameplay" relates not only to the strategic, but also emotional framework of play, as it is a unique reflection of the individual's meaningful bond to the game itself. And just as game theory has increasingly intersected with art theory, video games and gaming strategies have infiltrated much of our daily lives. |
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Featured national and international artists include Igloo, a British collective who is also showing at this summer's prestigious 52nd Venice Biennale, a global biennial exhibition of the world's best work. Their installation project, Summer Branch explores movement and stillness in nature, using the tools of the military-entertainment complex: computer gaming, motion capture, 3D environments and special effects to question what is truth and artifice in our attempts to reproduce nature. Igloo not only investigate the role of the 'real' in virtual environments, but also that of the reproduction of nature in the history of art and particularly landscape work.
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 Igloo, Summer Branch, 2007 |
 Stacia Yeapanis, untitled (2007) |
Some of Gameplay's most provocative works, however, come from local artists. Stacia Yeapanis, for example, a recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute, will be showing a video project, untitled (2007), in which she explores the mundane in the virtual world of Sims 2. Using the video game as her medium, this layered, performative piece explores the multiplicity of meanings that come from a single cultural project. Her experiences as a Sims participant include constant negotiations of the self, culminating in slideshows, performances, stills, and videos. Danielle Martin, also a local artist, has created a sound piece, Video Juego Symphonian (2007), which is a "symphony time warp" a layered and rhythmic composition of multiple video game sound samples.
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Gameplay attendees will also have ample opportunities to actually play video games. For example, visitors can play Matthew Board's Maybelline Mario, a version of Super Mario I that has been reformatted into a "feminine" palette of pinks and purples. This project is a critical exploration of identity and gender in gaming, in an attempt to shift the viewer's acceptance of the typical symbols of the game to a more esoteric visual lexicon.
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 Matthew Board, Maybelline Mario (2007) |
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Also, do not miss the opening night party, featuring a live audio video performance by video game artist Andrew Bucksbarg. In addition to this performance, the exhibition will feature his interactive game based on Galaga, a classic arcade video game. His project, GalagaRemiX2, references hacker, DIY culture, appropriation, circuit bending and live audio-visual practices, such as VJing.
Stacia Yeapanis' work for this exhibition is partially supported by a Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. This exhibition was made possible in part by a generous donation from
Around the Coyote, a 501(c)3 non-profit, supports, promotes and makes accessible Chicago's multidisciplinary arts community. Our activities enhance public discourse and provide creative outlets for emerging artists. Year-round programming includes multi-media arts festivals featuring visual art, theater, dance, video and poetry in the spring and fall; art exhibitions in the Around the Coyote gallery; an artist-in-residence program; membership opportunities for artists and art aficionados; educational outreach for all ages through multi-media art workshops, lectures, collaborations with local schools and agencies, and career development workshops for artists. This programming is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the CityArts 2 grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.
Gallery/Office Hours: Monday through Friday 10-6pm and Saturday 12-6pm. Directions: Located in the historic Flat Iron Arts Building, take the Blue Line to Damen Avenue. |
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