This article was originally published on Neocha and is republished with permission.
Low-poly graphics and textures have recently become a trend in the indie video-game scene. Moved by nostalgia and a desire to harness the playersโ imaginations, developers have reclaimed the PS1 and N64 aesthetics of the 1990s in a handful of last generation games. But itโs unexpected to see such a style in the fine-arts world.
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Houston-based Chinese artistย Gฤo Hรกng ้ซ่ชย proudly exhibits his low-poly art on the walls of galleries. In his latest series of paintings, sarcastically titledย 21st Century Realism, he reflects on our infotech era and how the fast-paced spread of information affects our social and consumer lives. Contrary to the title, however, his paintings are far from realistic. They mix low-poly style with the mischievous spirit of the internet memes to form a satirical commentary on this generationโs online behavior.
โMy creative process has to do with my habits and obsessions,โ he says. โI mostly listen to standup comedy while working. I like it when comedy challenges general beliefs and political correctness. In a way, my paintings are like standup comedy, with brutal honesty and humorโpowerful qualities in any conversation.โ
Gao scours the internet in search of images to reference for his paintings. But he never reproduces them in full. Instead, he prefers reimagining how the image may look from different angles or with a different composition. Finally, he reduces them into primitive polygon shapes and colors, airbrushing the imagery with acrylic paint on canvas.
Heโs drawn to visuals that feel awkward and unpolished, as is the case with retro video games. Aiming to recreate the same feeling in his works, he often depicts close-ups of characters holding guns and first-person perspectives. Gao cites classics like GoldenEye 007, for Nintendo 64, and the PC game Counter-Strike 1.4 as inspiration. โI think my fascination [with video games] started in my formative years, and it psychologically shocked me,โ he says. โI know we have VR games nowadays, but these old games provided legit immersion back then. Even if we think their graphics were poor, we were more than pleased with them.โ
Though he includes recognizable elements in his paintings, Gao describes his works as being his take on color field paintings. Heโs interested in the significance of colors, particularly fluorescents because they represent scientific innovation, one thatโs enabled an entirely new visual experience in the last century. In his works, fluorescent colors are a metaphor for peopleโs social media behavior. โIf you donโt broadcast yourself, you disappear,โ he explains. โWe have to be fluorescent, visually aggressiveโor just aggressive.โ Gao admits he doesnโt like social media, but heโs on it nevertheless. โOtherwise, I donโt exist,โ he says.
Memes are another ripe source of inspiration for him. Gao admires their irreverence and honesty, but also the fact that they proliferate easily. โLetโs be honest: the idea of copyright is gone. It doesnโt matter anymoreโjust like the people who made these images donโt matter,โ he jokes. But thereโs a grain of truth in his saying. Online content is easy to download and reproduce, rendering its creators irrelevant. Memes are, perhaps, the best example of this phenomenon: what matters is that they propagate through the internet, from one user to another, in endless derivatives of the original.
Gao grew up in Baoding, a relatively small Chinese city, in an open-minded household compared to most of his peers. As a child, his parents took him on trips to nearby historical villages so that they could all draw and paint the idyllic scenery. Since then, he hasnโt stopped making art. Gao received his bachelorโs in oil painting from the Capital Normal University in Beijing and his masterโs in painting and drawing from the University of Houston. In Beijing, his earlier works were โabsolutely dark,โ he says, โa dark fairytale ruled by academic realism. Ridiculous. But very honest for a twenty-year-old.โ
When he moved to the United States, his subject interests and style changed. Suddenly overwhelmed by an endless array of information about art that he could find in the school library he studied the lives of the great artists he admires, such as Andy Warhol, Benjamin Butler, and David Hockney. A more colorful style emerged, together with the appearance of elements from contemporary American pop culture, such as images of celebrities, basketball culture, and Nike sneakers. โSome of these are very American things, but theyโre popular in the entire world,โ he says. โI am overwhelmed by how crazy people everywhere react to these symbols.โ
Rather than discussing differences between his motherland and his newfound home in the United States, Gao prefers focusing on their similarities. โIf there is a culture that represents my generation, it is social media culture,โ he says. โAnd it doesnโt matter where you come from or where you liveโwe are all in the digital world.โ
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Website:ย www.gao-hang.com
Contributors:ย Tomas Pinheiro,ย Lucas Tinoco
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li
