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The Gap is proud to current Re_Spawn, our second solo exhibition by Minneapolis-based artist Mathew Zefeldt. Zefeldt creates work of simulated worlds the place time and mortality stop to exist.
Zefeldt’s work are knowledgeable by the 2013 online game Grand Theft Auto V, which Zefeldt augments with a personalised avatar, wardrobe and automobiles. Scenes embrace exploding police cruisers, automobiles flying off cliffs and interactions with different gamers’ avatars, together with in-game interfaces like navigational insets and notifications in regards to the well being standing of adversaries.
Zefeldt’s canvases may be good landscapes and cityscapes made horny by the inclusion of quick automobiles, fighter jets and the impression that we may very well be on the controls. Taken as cultural commentary, they are often reflections on our obsession with the spectacle of violence and the vicarious expertise of defying demise. The title of the present—Re_Spawn—is a gaming time period referring to the automated cycle of demise and rebirth which permits gamers freedom from authorized consequence and digital immortality. Importantly although, there are scant depictions of gore on this sequence; in Re_Spawn 12 (Hearth) one useless character lies supine and unbloodied midway out of body. Extra usually we see Zefeldt’s avatar stopping to admire a view. Over his shoulder, in Foreground Middleground Background, we see 4 lovely frames of the GTA universe’s model of Hollywood Hills.
Lots of Zefeldt’s current work use a Warholian grid composition to seize a number of scenes from the sport, a method that contributes to the screen-like flatness of the work and suggests the likelihood that we occupy a number of parallel realities. With this physique of labor, the artist pokes not simply on the scrim between the digital and bodily, but additionally between ourselves and our cultural realities: Who’re we and the way will we categorical ourselves? What worlds will we create, and which will we destroy?
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