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Mauro C. Martinez used to be dismissive of gaming. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the Texas-based artist found creative inspiration in it. After he painted a series of gaming setups, “LANscapes” was born.

“I got to see how gaming, and the adjacent technology that they utilize, facilitates community in times when there’s no way to reach each other in a physical way,” said self-proclaimed “painter of the internet” Martinez.

“LANscapes” is the fourth iteration of Syracuse University Art Museum’s The Art Wall Project, which began during SU’s 2021-2022 academic year. Each iteration features a collection by one contemporary artist and is available for view through that academic year to facilitate extended conversation and engagement with the artworks.

The collection is on display until May 10. It is curated by Melissa Yuen, the interim chief curator of the museum, and comprises three artworks, with two oil-on-canvas paintings and one sculpture.

One of the paintings, “Terrestrial” depicts a LAN party, where gamers bring personal computers or consoles and connect them to a local area network to play multiplayer games together. The other, “Celestial,” shows a solo online gamer in a chair. The sculpture, “The Internet,” was crafted with wireless networking technology hardware.

For Maria Clara Cardoso, an SU advertising graduate student, “Terrestrial” is a testament to the communal bonds in gaming, whereas “Celestial” brings back memories of her brother who played video games. Cardoso also said the medium made the scenes seem more harmonious.

“Communities are meant to be together,” she said. “And we don’t want harsh lines breaking that up.”

Yuen said she and Martinez wanted to show the shift from gaming being a physical communal activity in the 1990s and 2000s, as depicted in “Terrestrial,” to the wifi-enabled digital spaces of the 2020s shown in “Celestial.” Martinez also said it was his way of documenting “a brief history of the internet.”

While “LANscapes” has been in the works for over a year, it has not been an easy journey for Martinez. Even after having chosen the two paintings in the initial planning of the collection, he was thinking of different possibilities.

“For me, artist block doesn’t come in the form of not having enough ideas,” Martinez said. “It comes in the form of having too many.”

After deciding where he wanted to take the project, the process was smoother. Martinez said he felt proud after finishing “Terrestrial” since it was the first time he had painted people engaged in gaming on that scale.

Martinez said he chose oil paint to challenge what art history has deemed not worthy to be painted in oil. By using this medium, Yuen said Martinez elevates an activity like video gaming to the level of historical depictions of royalty, mythology, or even biblical scenes.

“It subverts what we think of not only video gaming but also painting,” Yuen said. “We don’t hear or smell the scene and in a way it freezes what would be a very dynamic, interactive, loud, noisy scene in time.”

For his sculpture, “The Internet,” Martinez used hardware including ethernet cords and a router because he liked the idea of using real pieces of technology to imitate life, similar to the concept of video games. According to Yuen, the actual hardware visualizes the infrastructure needed for the internet.

Yuen said “LANscapes,” along with The Art Wall Project as a whole, is the museum’s contribution to teaching and research at SU. She and Martinez hope the collection enhances student experiences like Cardoso’s and starts conversations about how subjects, like gaming, are worthy of being art.

“So much of it is about representation. The magic isn’t in the subject. It is in the artist and their perspective,” Martinez said. “I want to walk away having inspired the next generation to think anything is paintable.”

Published on September 10, 2024 at 11:05 pm

Contact Manaswini: pillaimanaswini@gmail.com