SMMoA Santa Monica Museum of Art

Brody Condon

26 Jan - 19 Apr 2008

© Brody Condon
Project Room 1: Judgment Modification (After Memling)
Project Room I

Brody Condon
January 26 - April 19, 2008
Opening reception: Friday, January 25, 7 - 9 p.m.

In his first museum exhibition on the West Coast, Brody Condon will present DefaultProperties(), a self-playing video game where the artist creates three-dimensional models of game characters that interact within the religious iconography of a 15th Century painting by Hans Memling. Condon’s work is rooted in video games and the culture of those obsessed with gaming. Condon creates digital projections that deal with subjects as historically diverse as medieval battles and counterterrorist military operations; he examines the ways that the visual language of gaming confuses fantasy with gritty reality. For example, in Velvet-Strike, (2002), he used the general look and characters from the popular game Counterstrike, but added war protests and protesters to the gaming environment. In KarmaPhysics (2004), Condon modified the science fiction first person shooter game Unreal 2003 to present the viewer with images of an infinite pink fog filled with the floating, twitching bodies of Elvis Presley. Condon calls his process “creative consumption.”
 

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