Play – videogame, art and more

La Venaria Reale organises a great exhibition looking into video games as the “tenth form of art” performed by 3 billion people worldwide, acknowledging its profound impacts on contemporary society.

In the year dedicated to the “game” theme, the Reggia narrates a creative industry which is still often perceived just as an entertainment world and a mere pastime.  But, is it really like that?

Video games are actually a creative bridgehead on which ideas and visions are born, meta-art in which architecture, painting, sculpture, music, performing arts, poetry, cinema, and comics cohabit creating stratified collective worlds. 

Throughout the twelve Sale delle Arti exhibition rooms, digital canvases by great video game masters interact with renowned masterpieces from the past and the present, encouraging us to reflect on the new aesthtics, cultures, languages, policies and economies of the 21st century. 

For the very first time you will have the chance to admire the influences of great masters of the past including De Chirico, Hokusai, Calder, Dorè, Savinio, Piranesi, Kandinsky, Warhol (along with Hellenic vases dating back to the 5th century BC) on the aesthetics of video games such as Ico, Monument Valley, Rez Infinite, Okami, Diablo IV and Apotheon.

The convergence of static imagine, animated image and interactive image is the focus of the other spaces: visitors can engage with living artists like Bill Viola, Invader, Cao Fei, Jago, Tabor Robak, the AES+F collective, and Federico Clapis, who have drawn from the (video) game language to create some of their material and digital works.

The exhibition is curated by Fabio Viola, game designer, professor, essayist and founder of the TuoMuseo artistic collective, and by Guido Curto, director of the Consortium of Savoy Royal Residences.