This series is made from a collection of screenshots I took while exploring different parts of the map of RuneScape – a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game I used to play as a kid. By working again on it in 2018, I wanted to question the apparition of the author in his own work, thinking about the romantic tradition of artists rendering themselves absent from their work. I felt more and more uncomfortable with this mythology.
I wanted to acknowledge and find my own speaking body. These maps are thus self-portraits. The white dot in the center is the representation of the digital Me, and the surrounding dots are plants (turquoise), creatures (yellow), or dropped objects (red). In these maps, I evolve through different landscapes such as caverns, shores, forests and mountains. It's a work that reflects and questions the boundaries of the mind.
Through their way of hanging, I chose to emphasise their haptic dimension to communicate with the whole body of the viewer. I also painted them with the «pochade» technique to create a deeper tactile surface with thick dough of paint. The dimensions of the painting’s frames were also made after the width of my own body.
I regard them as back-and-forth zooms between the microscopic pixel Me and the distant global view showing dots which could be constellations.
Lesser demon’s lair
Otherworldly beings
White wolf mountain
Lava maze (white berry respawn)
Banana plantation
Shipwreck
Oaks and bears
Ice giant’s cavern (blurite ores)