There are a lot of artists who love video games. However, when I ask Gao Han about this interest in the context of his art, he declares that it is more of an impulse than a reference. He remembers the shock he felt when he first encountered video games when he was a child. [this] The impact I felt from the digital world that continues to fascinate me. ” Gao have The idea, he says, is to create art that expresses that shocking emotion over and over again. The same urge many people have to power cycle their PlayStation is to use an airbrush. “It's not a complicated impulse. When I was a kid I had to draw dinosaurs every day, and now it's this.”
Indeed, Gao Hang has been doing this for a while. When we spoke to the Houston-based artist in 2021, exploring video games was a common theme, along with memes and color fields. Now, for the new exhibition at Pulpo Gallery, do you understand?you are also simulated, The through line has never been clearer.
That's not to say the same goes for line drawings. Airbrushing has been a favored technique for many years, but this time we're getting very close to objects whose faces and shapes are almost completely lost due to mapping his rendering flaws seen in most video games of the early 2000s. and cut it out. Perhaps you can figure it out. If you're lucky, listen. Gao has always liked the “silliness” of these flaws and how they are a testament to the human hand in game development.
“I think I’ve been practicing zooming in on game characters since 2016, when I was in a graduate program,” he says. “Then I stared at the screen for a long time. As I got closer, the details lost their sharpness and the 'fine' things became 'graphic'. ”
