There is no escaping the analog nature of oil painting, which has been a means of communicating and documenting the lives and times of artists for centuries. But there certainly are ways to push this traditional medium to its furthest limits and infuse it with new and unexpected life. The German artist Hell Gette relishes this challenge and constructs her paintings to be static, self-created video games that riff on mythology and art history as much as they do gaming culture and bad Photoshop.

To begin, Gette deftly sources assets like emojis and roughly-copied digital elements from scans of her own plein air landscape paintings to create new realms for her games to inhabit. In earlier works, the viewer (or recipient) of a painting was often inserted into the games as an opponent, dropped off in the middle of battles against swarms of thickly-painted zombie emojis or left to dodge legions of raining lightning bolts. Hell Gette has made a significant shift in her newest paintings by bringing us, the viewer, in to play the role of helper and aid to her protagonists and heroes.

In this adventure, titled Ze Sun Ze Sea Ze Mountain (a play on German accents), we find ourselves up against trident-wielding emoji mermaids and climbing tall mountains to receive green hearts from a benevolent genie. It is clear who our saviors are– Artists, musicians and other creatives seek to help us in our battle against villains and foes that tirelessly attempt to end our game. The final level of this epic saga is an homage to Botticelli’s 1485 painting, The Birth of Venus, where we shoot a pink heart (earned in another stage of the game) squarely towards Venus with the hope of her falling in love with us. Cupid is along for the ride and also shooting hearts to help us achieve our goal, but clever Venus wants none of it. Hiding in the clouds, she reflects hearts back at Cupid with a mirror, inadvertently giving him the greatest gift of all– falling in love with himself. Our last token earned is a middle finger emoji beckoning us to play again.

Hell Gette (b. 1986, Karabulak, Kazakhstan) currently lives and works in Munich, Germany and occasionally in New York City. She graduated with honors from the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 2018, where she studied with Prof. Markus Oehlen. Gette has had recent solo exhibitions at Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen Museum (Sindelfingen, GE), Kebbel Villa Museum (Schwandorf, GE) Each Modern Gallery (Taipei, Taiwan), and Nagel Draxler (Berlin, GE). She has been awarded residencies at 18th Street Arts Center (Los Angeles, CA), Fiorucci Art Trust (Stromboli, Italy), and DAAD (New York, NY).