Last autumn I blogged about artist Emily Allchurch, whose series of works entitled Urban Chiaroscuro featured dark urban environments that closely resembled videogame levels.
Well, if you're interested in occasionally viewing art that has some visual and thematic similarities to game worlds (and who isn't?), go and see the Mie Olise Kjærgaard exhibtion at the Alexia Goethe gallery in London. From the preview:
"[Kjærgaard] uses deserted structures such as quarry towers, mine shafts, ships and sawmills as the subjects for her paintings. Encapsulating both the function and redundancy of spaces and machines that were once productive, built and designed of necessity; there is a melancholy and sometimes brutality to her depiction of their neglect."
Videogames, too, make regular use of wasted industrial and urban landscapes - from the burnt out cities of COD4 to the sci-fi distopias of Gears of War, Bioshock and Resistance: Fall of Man. The piece pictured looks a bit like one of the locations in GRAW. And like the paintings, these games turn architectural degradation into something aesthetically appealing.
It's worth checking out the other paintings - they really remind me of some of the sketches I've seen game artists create before 3D modelling begins. I'm not sure the artist would thank me for that.
The exhibition runs from 29 Feb - 7 Apr 2008.
