Press [Pause]
Marco Antonini
My first video-gaming experience dates back to the mid-80s, with the landing of a strongly desired Commodore 64 8-bit personal computer in my living room. The choice of machine was the result of refined market-analysis performed by my older brother and I in search of the "definitive" PC model, in an era when home entertainment pioneers developed on fast-forward. Before that time, arcades, bars and the like were the only places where my friends and I could cure the videogame fever afflicting us (as well as our whole generation).
Personal computing introduced me to the pleasures of cheap, pixilated, tape-recorded videogames. Most of my games were pirate-copies of the original titles, sold pretty much anywhere in Italy. These tapes took forever to load a single game, and waiting for the endless "loading" sign to disappear from the screen (usually, a mere TV-Set) was actually part of the pleasure. I can recall thousands of memories, glimpses and details from these videogames: all-time favorites include the haunting, quasi-triphop soundtrack of Ghouls and Ghosts and the nickname of one of Frank Bruno’s Boxing crappiest contenders: "Ravioli Mafiosi" (guess where he was intended to be from).
When I was a kid, I had a little secret ritual: I used to "pause" the videogame and just stare at the screen. Usually, I would get real close and get lost within the pixel patterns for long minutes, trying to imagine what was beyond them. I also purposely left a paused videogame on for hours, checking out that prehistoric virtual reality now and again while doing my homework or something else.
Pausing a videogame in action is opening a window to a world that would otherwise be made totally unreadable and transient by the videogames’ own fruition dynamics. From this standpoint, Mauro Ceolin’s Solid Landscapes were a total revelation to me. Using a drawing tablet, Mauro creates detailed reproductions of some of the most popular videogames’ background landscapes. These reproductions free the landscape imagery from the distracting presence of all game-related elements and characters.
Freed from the game’s action and continuity, these landscapes shine in a different light, assuming a whole different and unexpected identity. One of the most striking features is their immediate familiarity, a direct consequence of their popularity but also of the peculiar universality of video games’ imagery. These landscapes are background to some of the most market-effective and targeted entertainment products available. The video game industry nowadays is superior to even Hollywood’s dream-factory when it comes to targeting customers. Basically, there’s always a good market-related reason for anything to be (or not to be) onscreen. The commercial success of scenography and atmosphere-savvy videogame titles is more and more evident, as game engines become rapidly outdated in a seamlessly endless growth of game-design possibilities that is seriously starting to toy with de facto virtual reality.
The real strength of Ceolin’s Solid Landscapes, though, lies in the creative process at their foundation, more than in their obvious conceptual implications. Recreating, handcrafting something as transient and immaterial as a videogame frame (pardon my reference to an non-existing film) is neither a pose nor a fixation. These paintings are not intended to dominate or tame the natural energy of otherwise too unstable digital media. Mauro’s attitude blew past the reverent, passive attitude that too often surrounds new media art and set a new starting point, making a hybrid of old and new techniques. It appeared crystal-clear to me the very moment I first stared into one of his Solid Landscapes, attracted again by the same mysterious force that drew me closer to my Commodore 64 screen when I was a kid. This time, every single pixel seemed in the right place to me. It was nice to feel that rapture again, staring at the green bushes and quaint streams of some level of Zelda.
