The Venaria Realea grandiose monumental complex on the outskirts of Turin declared World Heritage Site by Unescocelebrates in the course of 2022 its first 15 years of opening to the public and does it with one unique exhibition.
La Venaria Reale presents the exhibition “Play – Videogame art and beyond”
Dal July 22, 2022 to January 15, 2023 the Venaria Reale will host the exhibition PLAY. Videogames, art and beyond, at the Halls of the Arts of the Reggia. The incredible exhibition aims to investigate video games as the “tenth art form” practiced by 3 billion people in the world.
It also wants to analyze the profound impacts in contemporary society of a creative sector still often perceived as a world of playful escapism e mere pastime.
But is it really so? Video games actually represent a creative outpost where ideas and visions are born; an art form in which architecture, painting, sculpture, music, performing arts, poetry, cinema, comics coexist giving life to stratified collective worlds.
Along the twelve rooms of the exhibition of the Sale delle Arti, the digital canvases of the great masters of video games enter into dialogue with famous masterpieces of the past he was born in gift inviting us to reflect on the new aesthetics, cultures, languages, policies and economies of the 21st century.
After the rooms related to aesthetic and symbolic influencesthe video game becomes contemporary mythologythe last link in a witness chain that began over 4000 years ago with theEpic of Gilgamesh passing through theIliad and theOdysseythe Divine Comedy up to the recent days with Star Wars, The Matrix ed Harry Potter.
The other rooms
The two rooms dedicated to the themes ofEros e Thanatos present to the visitor ten video games che generated profound impacts in the life of the players through the new interactive forms of writing.
The Hall of the Mastersinstead, it celebrates some of the pioneers of video games raising them to significant figures of art.
The penultimate room is meant to become one highly interactive space e sensory. Here there are four environments ranging from one Japanese arcade from the early 1980s until the future Metaverse. In addition to telling the evolutionary chronology of video games, visitors will also be able to play with Pacman, Street Fighter and Space Invaders cabinets; at the same time they will also be able to deal with most recent videogame productions.
Space Man playing will be enhanced by the collaboration with Lucca Comics & Games which contributed with the presence of boards originals e signed by the masters of international pop culture. The exhibition is curated by fabio viola e Short Guide. For more information you can consult the official site.