What if, instead of our tastes determining which artwork is interesting, each artwork, with its own distinctive personality and style, was quietly surveying the room to determine the most interesting viewer? The artwork, fixed and unchanging (even for just a short period of time), becomes the arbiter of taste as it decides which person to consume. The art is looking at you. Are you very interesting?

Just Gaming comprises the works of two artists, Marc Mitchell and Derek Larson, that lived/worked across the street from each other but now reside 1,000 miles apart. Each object directly corresponds to work being made by the other artist. Larson’s subversive light paintings and projections, while attune to popular culture, question materiality and notions in traditional painting. While Mitchell’s paintings challenge the sincerity of both historic painting and popular culture within a digital world.

Through selecting motifs or specific areas of artworks, both artists make choices based on open rules that are pre-generated and mimic those found within games. The result is an exhibition that simultaneously references the individual and collaborative; historical and contemporary; sincere and artificial; as well as aspects of culture that are mainstream and niche.

Derek G. Larson is an artist living and working in Georgia after receiving his MFA from the Yale School of Art. In his practice he combines digital media with painting, lights, motors, and projected animations on freestanding screens. He has participated in a number of national and international shows and residencies, with recent exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Mulherin + Pollard Gallery (New York), May Gallery (New Orleans) and Vox Populi (Philadelphia). His work is featured in the 2014 summer issue of New American Painters.

Marc Mitchell is an artist/curator that holds an MFA from Boston University and a BS from the University of Tampa. Mitchell has exhibited his artwork throughout the United States at institutions such as G.A.S.P Gallery, Boston; Denise Bibro Gallery, New York; University of Wisconsin, Madison; Indiana University of Pennsylvania; Los Angeles Center for Digital Art; and the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art, Augusta. Over the past 5 years, he has mounted exhibitions that feature artists such as Josef Albers, Louise Bourgeois, Emmet Gowin, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Longo, Allan McCollum, Richard Misrach, Thomas Nozkowski, Fred Sandback, and many others. Mitchell has held positions at Georgia Southern University, Boston University, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art and the Director of Exhibitions at the University of Arkansas.