𝘼𝑹𝙏 𝙁𝑶𝙍 𝘼 𝙃𝒀𝙋𝑬𝙍𝑴𝙀𝑫𝙄𝑨 𝑾𝙊𝑹𝙇𝑫

The RPG of Wolfgang Saker.

Wolfgang Saker, Fun For Everyone (2023) - modified

When I talk to Wolfgang Saker it’s a hypertext conversation; every topic we discuss seems to open up a new one and we discuss abstract expressionism and digital readymades and projections and Rust and the destruction of “fine art” and handmade meat hammers and Sonic giving birth and $8.50 wine in galleries and how even something crude but immersive can feel as real as the real thing and then and then —

This conversation takes place a little after Absence of Value and Meaning, Saker’s solo show held on Rust, streamed on Twitch, and which set him out as a voice happy to play within and outside traditional institutions, to make cool shit, and create his own space.

Saker’s work is described as irreverent; where cyberpunk meets surrealism. Our conversation took us beneath these aesthetics; I was interested in mindset, process, and influences. Understanding the spirit of making for a blurry world where meatspace meets virtual, where traditional galleries and buyers still struggle to get their heads around new media. A few choice extracts from our combined brain, those of mine —

and Wolfgang Saker.

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I was experimenting with the idea of life in video games. Digital readymades.

There was a point where some people thought/hoped life itself might move online. One was even called Second Life. You remember that Jon Rafman stuff?

Yeah I was killing my World of Warcraft character; a minute-long video of him drowning or falling or burning and stuff. And then from there, I wanted to make more video game animations, but I realised I didn’t have enough time to learn Blender or Unreal.

So I found a Japanese hentai game with a huge modding community for it, and deep-dived into the weird mods for these people making their waifus, and turned those into videos. They are all inherently sexual, but that's why I like to use the male body and strip away the penis and make them look like girls a bit, so there's, this weird gaze of — well, they look fucking weird.

Wolfgang started as an expressionist (coming from a lineage of abstract expressionists, it’s in the blood), and this opportune pivot into digital creation gave him an immediate canvas to blend traditional and new media forms.

Abstract expressionism comes because I put those paintings on the character skins. They're like dancing paintings.

Influences include — well, obviously Duchamp, but also Liu Yang, and Jon Rafman, who was thrilled and excited by the creations of those in Second Life who were simply delighted to just create.

Rafman is interesting, because infinite scrolling is how he finds inspiration. “I see the online world as my material, the same way a painter would use colours and paint. Nothing is created from scratch anymore – everything is created from something else”.

Using new tools, digital readymades, figuring out how to do it without knowing how to do it is always good, I think.

But using the program for too long, you start to know it and it loses a bit of just the — unknownness and experimenting in the playing.

Technology is not there to master, it’s there to mess with.

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It was my first solo show. I was thinking — how do I get solo shows? I may as well just make my own one in this game.

Plus I can also do size and scale in there, which I can't do in real life.

Saker dropped me into the idea of storytelling installations.

Riffing on the work of Ed Atkins, an inspiration for Saker, and whose large-scale IRL physical exhibitions create carefully constructed spaces of digital and physical elements. The rooms are often dark and minimalist, with strategically placed screens, speakers, and physical objects, all designed to immerse you fully, making you hyper-aware of the relationship between the virtual images and your physical presence in the space.

Ed Atkins

One of the key things about Atkins’ installations is how they amplify the emotional intensity of the videos. He’s a master of using physical space to heighten the psychological impact of his work.

Is something lost when the work is experienced purely online?

I fully intend to make this work in the real world too, as installations. The static images are designed to help people who are less familiar with the online world to connect with the content.

But as for the virtual space — I think if you can interact with the world, you will be immersed in it in a way. Like, if I'm just looking at pictures, I don't think I can get as immersed in it, but if I'm in the game walking around, I feel like I'm there as much as being there anyway.

At a moment when a default play for lazy curators is to create “immersive experiences” that simply use big screens and projections to make the gallery space Instagram-bait… no, how about we bring the concrete into the virtual.

I wanted to see what happened. If I had a gallery there, would people react to it? And, would they come in and try to break it or not?

They came, they saw, they loved it (some), they were bewildered (others). But no one destroyed it.

There’s this push among well-meaning, government-adjacent art advocates to bring new audiences into art. But this is often betrayed by an unwillingness to go into emergent spaces and fuck with the weirdos. But why shouldn’t public art exist in video games any more than town squares?

For art to be truly upstream of culture, it has to be present in the negative space where art is not.

And without the audacious creators trying to break these intention of these places, they’re no more than technocapital.

０３＿ａｒｔ．ｒｐｇ

But truly. Maybe we’re all a little too busy for that. The trajectory of post-internet artists can feel like a brawl with institutions, being put in a position where you have to serve content platforms as much as follow your own inspiration.

Sometimes you have to make your own luck.

I'm making a sword at the moment, and then I've got to edit this video and start to put together the one painting in that. A meat hammer. And then other than that we are starting to make a pilot for a show.

Classical boundaries of genre and status can be useful. But we can’t be slaves to them either… the online context is way too wild and free for that.

Yeah I'm so irony-rotted that I see, like, a deviantart of Sonic giving birth, and feel — that'd be a great big painting. Sometimes I see a meme someone made and think that's the best thing I've seen all year. So yeah, I don't think there is really a dichotomy between high and low anymore.

I agree.

But is the art world ready for that yet? It’s hard work trying to win that. At least until there are new funding models, and a new generation of collectors.

I think of the grind of doing the group shows and the solo shows and stuff. You start off shit and you just get better and just like, hopefully by the end of it you're like, elite level.

It's really like an rpg.

And we keep grinding.

Go further:

WolfgangSaker.com and Instagram

Munchies profile on Wolfgang Saker

Ed Atkins

Jon Rafman