The Arcade Project

For this exhibition, Buffalo artist Kurt Treeby will create three fully playable video games based on art historical themes. Adopting a retro style derived from consoles such as the Atari 2600 or Nintendo Entertainment System, the project will include the games Constantin Brancusi's Endless Column, Picasso's War, and Un Chien Andalou.

These new games draw on art historical themes in the same manner as Treeby's previous works in fiber, utilizing imagery appropriated from pre-existing paintings and sculptures. In his fiber pieces, the works resolve naturally into a pixelated form through crochet or cross stitch. In order to bridge this visual connection from fiber to pixels, Treeby taught himself Game Maker Studio in order to produce work that is literally playable and not merely referential toward the form.

While video games are one of the largest and most lucrative realms of the entertainment industry, they remain, even after many decades of development, targets of censure and criticism — they exalt violence, they promote anti-social behavior, they are gigantic time sinks, they contribute little to culture, and so on. The truth is more complex — the sorts of unique experiences created within games are not at all dissimilar from the effects produced by great works of art (because that's what they can be). They are filled with creative obstacles and demand creative solutions. They engage mechanisms of critical thinking. They are fueled by imagination. And the spontaneous experiences they generate — a combination of their design and how the player plays — can frequently land in a sublime place.

In these ways, we discover rapidly that they are no dissimilar from that which we more commonly call art.