PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

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PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

VRAL is currently exhibiting Mikhail Maksimov’s The New Game Is Over. To better contextualize and appreciate his multi-layered oeuvre, we are examining recurring themes in the Russian avant-garde artist oeuvre. Today, we revisit Maksimov’s hysterical parody The Pasture (2016).

A satire of the contemporary artworld, The Pasture (2016) is a peculiar meta-horror game by Mikhail Maksimov, that combines the thrilling practice of art gallery curation with exciting survival horror gameplay. No, this is not the game where you get to destroy Jeff Koon’s artworks (even though his damn balloon dog haunts the virtual gallery), so please bear with me.

Borrowing heavily from established genres and, at the same time subverting the clichés with gusto, The Pasture allows players to explore an art gallery while avoiding two stalking monsters. Set in a contemporary generic White Cube, players chain-smoke their way through the predictably pristine ivory interior. Shapeshifting creatures — a metaphor for the hypocrisy that pervades this abstract jungle — populate the premises, but the true focus is on the menacing adversaries accompanying the player. These enemies maintain proximity, requiring constant backward movement to evade them. While maneuvering the gallery, players encounter significant Russian art sculptures, including a large set of sliced breasts (evoking Patrick Bateman’s psychotic pun, “keeping abreast”), collecting them to increase their score à la Pokémon. As the game is mainly targeted at millennials, the smartphone is the main interface — pics or it doesn’t exist! All the while, a “time until you die” bar fills the screen, dwindling if the player pauses. Prominently featured are three disembodied hands holding cups with tea bags hosting wriggling worms or the aforementioned mobile phones displaying videos of the smoking woman approaching. Beyond the gallery lies a graveyard-infested garden, beneath a banner declaring “International of death”, a theme consistent with Maksimov’s main obsession (don’t forget that his alter ego is the Postmanian mantra “dying fun”). Notably, players may occasionally manifest as a strange winged man, alternating between human and pig-like forms, sporting a cloud-covered blue top hat and brandishing a sizable phallic eggplant-like object. As the man, the floating arms may instead wield guns rather than the usual oddities.

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Matteo Bittanti