From pixel to light: painting as a device of hyperreality
With Videoplayer, I inaugurate a new phase of my pictorial research, where figurative tradition converges with the technological language of video games. My painting—rendered through oil, acrylics, and mixed media—explores the virtual world as the new landscape of the contemporary image.
The project is rooted in a reflection on visual identity and simulation, central themes in post-digital culture, where the boundary between the observer and the image dissolves. As in Baudrillard’s Simulacrum, the image no longer represents reality but replaces it: the video player thus becomes the icon of a mediated perception, a suspended pause between being and appearing.
From the pixel to the light, Videoplayer narrates the metamorphosis of the digital image as it seeks a new 'home' within pictorial matter. Throughout the different chapters of the project—from The Pause of the Player to Virtual Dinner—the icon is transformed from a painting into a sensory device, ultimately making the viewer the protagonist.
This research aligns with the light-based traditions of Dan Flavin and James Turrell, as well as the spiritual poetics of Bill Viola, sharing the same tension between perception and transcendence. However, the pictorial gesture—manual and patient—returns everything to a human tempo, countering digital speed with the memory of vision.
In Videoplayer, painting does not imitate technology: it absorbs it, deciphers it, and renders it back as a sensory experience. The synthetic image finds a new dwelling in color.
“On my videoplayer”
“The game exhibition”
“The incoming call”
“The hero on a red armchair”
“A strange timeless night”
“The shower”
“Without religion”
