A World Built of Paint and Bits

Architizer News

A World Built of Paint and Bits

July 6, 2012

Nodulor, 2012. Viktor Timofeev.

When asked to envision future cityscapes, many would turn to those already crafted in films like Tron, in the Jetsons, or in the fantastical renderings of architects like Lebbeus Woods or the Futurist Sant’Elia. These are realms in which context, historical or local, has been blasted out to space, in which the human figure occurs as incidental or not at all, and where laws of the physical universe have been superseded or made to disappear.

New into this futuristic milieu come the drawings and paintings of Viktor Timofeev, though his work does not arrive out of the same utopian/dystopian narratives which motivate many other world-creators. His motivation is simpler: he creates spaces that he wants to inhabit. Reminiscent of video game architecture, the scenes Timofeev draws feature blocky and pixelated mountains surrounded by lava, or infinite series of ladders with game tokens hovering over them. Comparisons to arcade games are apt as the artist defines a landscape similar to an analog Minecraft.

Timofeev often exhibits his work and is currently featured in the exhibition Earth WORKS at PPOW gallery in New York, until July 27^th.