HyperGames is the title of the new group exhibition which took place at Federico Luger, the sister gallery to Wizard Gallery, in Milan from January 22 to March 31, 2020. The exhibition was conceived as the artistic analogy to the digital gaming phenomenon, making the physical space of the gallery become the counterpart to the online platform where gaming activities take place. In other words, this exhibition was meant to emulate to the most playful aspects of art; as a journey to discover or re-discover the child within all of us.
The curatorial idea behind the exhibition was to apply the concept of Game Theory and Gamification to the art sphere. As Johan Huizinga, one of the fathers of Modern Cultural History, explained in “Homo Ludens” (1938), the concept of game is a recently modern concept which has been successfully integrated within most cultures all over the world; reaching the spheres of Justice, Politics and Religion. In 1961, French sociologist Roger Caillois further developed the theory proposed by Johan Huizinga in his essay “Man, Play and Games” by dividing games into four categories: Agon or competition, Alea or chance, Mimicry or mimesis, and Ilinx or vertigo. All of this categories can be applied to Sociology and hence allow us to better understand the nature of our culture. Therefore, games can be used to understand cultural phenomena such as Art; which was the idea behind this exhibition: allow the visitor to experience a playful environment close to that in the gaming realm. This realm is the result of a combination of certainty and randomness, both in the moment of realisation and in the subsequent steps in which the work exists in all its effects and its concreteness. The selected works ranged from several artistic languages, from painting to sculpture, from installation to photography, thus promoting the diversification of meanings. The public was called to confront them, invited to play with what was in front of their eyes in a new multidimensional and timeless reality.
Image Credits: FL Gallery, Danilo Buccella ©, Igor Eškinja ©, Bruna Esposito ©,
