04 October 2021 by Dani Gagiu
Contemporary art does not contain only historical or philosophical references, because artists are people like us, with interests like ours. In this case, it’s about video games and how they can be combined with art.
An artist who includes references from games in his works and is present at the Art Encounters Biennial is Flaviu Rogojan. Born in Cluj-Napoca in 1990, he uses references from technology, video games or online culture in his artistic practice.
Examples of works by Flaviu Rogojan that are based on the video game industry are Falling through the world and Cheat Codes (Money). The first is a video work composed of glitches through which players fall off the map in games such as GTA, Assassin’s Creed or NFS. The second illustrates the multitude of codes with which we can “trick” a game to have money for items. The list of codes includes the famous HESOYAM from GTA San Andreas, which I admit I kind of abused. But it would have been nice to have a code like that in real life…
At this year’s biennial, Flaviu Rogojan is present with a work that is also based on games. The RayGun installation explores how light beams are sent and received from the guns of two game consoles: a Nintendo and a Chinese version that was cheaper and more popular in Eastern Europe.
Many of us have grown with those pixel-filled games and have witnessed their evolution to the point where the gaming industry is worth about $ 300 billion now. Flaviu Rogojan is just one of those who have been influenced by these games, and his art is a way to show us that everything in this world now revolves around the computer.