Uterus Man is an unlikely superhero. Sporting spiky white hair and armour the color of muscle and sinew, he boasts a number of particular assaults, the least outrageous of which could be “blood column” or “umbilical twine whip”. He will get round driving a “sanitary pad skateboard” or generally the faster “pelvis chariot”. The exuberant movie clip which introduces Uterus Man resembles a cutscene from a combating sport reminiscent of Tekken, although I first encountered him not on my PlayStation at residence however on the Zabludowicz Assortment, an artwork gallery in north London. It’s a part of a retrospective on Chinese language digital artist LuYang, whose work sits on the fertile intersection of gaming and modern artwork.
Born in Shanghai in 1984 and primarily based in Tokyo, LuYang is a part of a era of artists who grew up on a food plan of video video games and now deconstruct their themes and repurpose their visible language. They present how video games are increasing the horizons of nice artwork, not simply in subject material but additionally by offering new instruments that radically improve the scope and scale of what a single artist can create.
The exhibition centres round LuYang’s half-hour animated movie DOKU the Self, which premiered at this yr’s Venice Biennale and explores existential questions round reincarnation and the character of consciousness. Its a number of characters and high-fidelity dance sequences might need taken thousands and thousands of {dollars} and an enormous staff to provide 20 years in the past, however can now be made by a single artist with a modest finances utilizing sport engines reminiscent of Unity and Unreal Engine.
All artists are world-builders in a way, creating their very own aesthetic universes with characters, kinds and considerations that recur throughout their work, however these instruments permit digital property to be generated, manipulated and reused with minimal fuss. Different artists utilizing related methods embody Lawrence Lek, whose game-like movies are pushed by sci-fi narratives exploring the way forward for expertise in China, and Ian Cheng, whose work interrogating AI has been proven at MoMA and the Whitney in New York.
Down a hall in the back of the LuYang exhibition is a shock: an enormous retro-futurist arcade with a checkerboard flooring and pulsing neon lights, containing playable arcade machines made by the artist. They embody a dancing sport and a Uterus Man-themed racer through which you trip a life-size plastic motorcycle. For a gamer, these experiences would possibly really feel unpolished, however they nonetheless provide an exhilarating alternative to change into an lively participant in LuYang’s world and so grapple extra intently with their recurring characters and concepts.
The concepts are fascinating. The characters in DOKU are offered as trendy fighters, however every in truth represents a special path to Buddhist reincarnation. The movies are nice enjoyable and extremely fantastical, however in addition they interact sincerely with pressing modern questions: what turns into of the human soul in a digitally mediated world? And what’s gained and misplaced when the physique is recreated in digital area, when flesh and blood change into pixel and polygon? Even Uterus Man isn’t just performed for laughs, but additionally prompts questions on gender and the reproductive system.
As a youngster who grew up with anime and video games, I recognised that these questions have been usually current beneath the floor of convoluted Japanese role-playing video games and sci-fi anime, the place everybody all the time appears to be both sermonising in regards to the afterlife or killing God. But the gallery area inspired me to contemplate the concepts extra profoundly, significantly in a soul-quieting area just like the Zabludowicz’s important room, which was as soon as the nave of a Methodist church.
Essentially the most joyous high quality LuYang borrows from anime is the melodramatic tone, which allows tales to be hyper-colourful and extremely camp however nonetheless ask necessary questions. An analogous approach is utilized by Theo Triantafyllidis, whose movie Radicalization Pipeline, made utilizing a sport engine, reimagines social media platforms as online game battle zones the place MAGA-cap-wearing Trump supporters do battle with orcs wielding medieval weapons.
The artists on the vanguard of digital artwork are utilizing software program that can solely change into extra highly effective and accessible within the coming years. Their work will give art-lovers who’ve by no means understood gaming a chance to see what video video games have to supply. The reverse can also be true. At a number of factors within the exhibition, I handed two younger girls with pink hair filming themselves dancing to LuYang’s complicated choreography whereas listening to his alternatives of techno-pop. They appeared delighted to have found artwork that actually spoke their language.
‘LuYang NetiNeti’ on the Zabludowicz Assortment to Feb 12, zabludowiczcollection.com