//// The Democratic Commonwealth of Rome
YEAR 2022
SIZE 195x560x3,5cm
TECH Acrylic painting
TECH Oil painting
TECH Offset ink
TECH Canvas
TECH Aluminium
SHOW eXplore eXpand eXploit eXterminate
WHRE CRAC Occitanie / Sète [FR]
PICS Yohann Gozard
In the context of his 2021 residency at the Villa Médicis, Paul Loubet conducted research into Civilization II, a strategy and conquest video game that consists in creating an empire, by means of nothing less than the destruction of all surrounding others. Civilization II belongs to a broader family of « 4X » games (eXplore eXpand eXploit eXterminate). Imperialism and cultural domination, whose final stage would be extermination, are among the objects of these games.
Alongside analysis of the game, Paul Loubet took advantage of his residency to study the iconographic resources of the Vatican’s Galleria delle carte geografiche, a 120-metre-long gallery painted by Ignazio Danti between 1580 and 1585, which presents obvious analogies with the isometric views of another video game calles Age of Empires.
In the course of his research, Paul Loubet has unearthed the script of a round of the 1990s game, the visual inspiration for a series of new paintings. A large tryptic in the form of an altarpiece represents the end game, the map of a world that sees Rome dominating all other civilisations. From the 1990s game, the artist has preserved the pixelated visual aspect, a simple and flat colour palette, and a system of representation with no depth or base line. Like a game archaeologist, and as if to better conjure up the horror that the domination of all by one can inspire, the artist confronts us with a depiction of the end of the world : the map produced sets out past conquests and destructions, while projecting us into a dystopian future, where a single culture reigns.
If the format that Paul Loubet revisits here refers to historical and religious painting (the altarpiece), the deployed motifs stem from the mass culture and entertainment that is embodied by video games. Shifting our perspective on these different worlds, the artist radically and thoroughly decompartmentalises them.On the map, Paul Loubet places several cartouches, a series of those ornamental frames found in classical painting and sculpture. Like visual comments, these windows represent different elements of the game, such as the « wonders », exceptional architectural accomplishments that Paul Loubet brings into cohabitation in one same space: the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, and the Sistine Chapel. In another cartouche, the artist depicts the Villa Médicis of the future, half-palace, half-favela… He invites us to visually explore this map teeming with stories, while suggesting several points of visual focus: it is at once very large, so that this world can be viewed as a whole, and very close-up, so one can discover all the details that bring the surface of the canvas alive
TEXT Marie Cozette.
//// The Democratic Commonwealth of Rome
YEAR 2022
SIZE 195x560x3,5cm
TECH Acrylic painting
TECH Oil painting
TECH Offset ink
TECH Canvas
TECH Aluminium
SHOW eXplore eXpand eXploit eXterminate
WHRE CRAC Occitanie / Sète [FR]
PICS Yohann Gozard
In the context of his 2021 residency at the Villa Médicis, Paul Loubet conducted research into Civilization II, a strategy and conquest video game that consists in creating an empire, by means of nothing less than the destruction of all surrounding others. Civilization II belongs to a broader family of « 4X » games (eXplore eXpand eXploit eXterminate). Imperialism and cultural domination, whose final stage would be extermination, are among the objects of these games.
Alongside analysis of the game, Paul Loubet took advantage of his residency to study the iconographic resources of the Vatican’s Galleria delle carte geografiche, a 120-metre-long gallery painted by Ignazio Danti between 1580 and 1585, which presents obvious analogies with the isometric views of another video game calles Age of Empires.
In the course of his research, Paul Loubet has unearthed the script of a round of the 1990s game, the visual inspiration for a series of new paintings. A large tryptic in the form of an altarpiece represents the end game, the map of a world that sees Rome dominating all other civilisations. From the 1990s game, the artist has preserved the pixelated visual aspect, a simple and flat colour palette, and a system of representation with no depth or base line. Like a game archaeologist, and as if to better conjure up the horror that the domination of all by one can inspire, the artist confronts us with a depiction of the end of the world : the map produced sets out past conquests and destructions, while projecting us into a dystopian future, where a single culture reigns.
If the format that Paul Loubet revisits here refers to historical and religious painting (the altarpiece), the deployed motifs stem from the mass culture and entertainment that is embodied by video games. Shifting our perspective on these different worlds, the artist radically and thoroughly decompartmentalises them.On the map, Paul Loubet places several cartouches, a series of those ornamental frames found in classical painting and sculpture. Like visual comments, these windows represent different elements of the game, such as the « wonders », exceptional architectural accomplishments that Paul Loubet brings into cohabitation in one same space: the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, and the Sistine Chapel. In another cartouche, the artist depicts the Villa Médicis of the future, half-palace, half-favela… He invites us to visually explore this map teeming with stories, while suggesting several points of visual focus: it is at once very large, so that this world can be viewed as a whole, and very close-up, so one can discover all the details that bring the surface of the canvas alive
TEXT Marie Cozette.