Leo Castañeda

Works Featured:

"Levels and Bosses" (2017)

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Bio:

I produce works ranging from paintings to experimental video games that evoke spaces and forms between abstraction and science fiction. Pieces appear both alien and familiar and filtered through subdued palettes that place viewers in unknown timelines. Minimalist machines meet scenes of ambiguous origins across feedback loops of analog to digital translating drawings and paintings into interactive virtual worlds through video game design software. The cycle continues as images of virtual spaces and digital process renders become a reference for paintings and sculptures. Installations include handmade works and digital experiences simultaneously, giving sculptures function as machines through which viewers enter the virtual worlds.

Works are organized under the linguistic structures in video games, where words such as “Levels”, “Bosses”, and “Items”, recall hierarchies of power, mythologies, corporations and more. Through these labels, I aim to bridge qualities of the gaming and art industries such as gaming's interactivity and malleability of the self, with the tangibility and layered significance of art. Also, gaming's innately global platform of inexpensive and endless reproduction in contrast to fine art's relationship to scarcity and high commercial values.

Links:

http://leocastaneda.format.com