Gao Hang gets up close and personal with video game characters and then paints them

Many artists like video games. But when I ask Gao Hang about this interest in the context of his art, he assures me that it is more of an impulse than a reference. “As a child, I remember the shock I felt when I first encountered video games. It is [this] Shock I experienced from the digital world that keeps attracting me.” Gao has To make art that describes this shocking feeling again and again, he says. Like the compulsion that many people have to switch on a PlayStation again, but with an airbrush. “It's not a complicated impulse: as a child I had to draw dinosaurs every day, and now this is it.”

It's true that Gao Hang has been doing this for some time. When we spoke with the Houston-based artist in 2021, video game explorations were a common theme, along with memes and swatches. Now, ahead of a new exhibition at Pulpo Gallery, Do you see? They are also simulated, The line of passage has never been so clear.

That doesn't mean the lines are either. Airbrush has been a popular medium for years, but this time it cuts so close to objects that the face and shape are almost completely lost to the mapping rendering deficiencies you can find in most video games of the early 2000s – you might recognize you one ear if you're lucky. Gao always liked the “ridiculousness” of these flaws and how they demonstrate the human hand in game development.

“I think I’ve been practicing zooming in on game pieces since 2016 when I was in a graduate program,” he says. “I would then stare at my screen for a long time. The closer I get, the more the details lose clarity, the 'fine' becomes 'rough'.”