Game Show

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Throughout the 20th century the world of games — with its inversions of mastery, dependence on chance, and reliance on both verbal and physical play — intrigued and inspired visual artists. With its exhibition Game Show, MASS MoCA presented the first major exhibition to explore how artists have adapted game structures and themes in their work.

Game Show focused on the proliferation of artists’ “games” during the 1990s, concentrating on new media work and including pieces by Sophie Calle, Perry Hoberman, Natalie Bookchin, Christian Jankowski, Uri Tzaig, Danny O, Jodi, Lonnie Flickinger, Maciej Wisniewski, Thompson & Craighead, Christoph Draeger, and Chris Finley. MASS MoCA also commissioned a new work by Kay Rosen for the exhibition.

For the net art section of Game Show, MASS MoCA worked with rhizome.org founders Mark Tribe and Alex Galloway. Rhizome served as curators for this portion of Game Show, selecting the works to be shown and contributing an essay for the Game Show catalogue as well as catalogue entries on the individual works.

Danny O, Ball Walk, 2002
photo by Kevin Kennefick