Playa

Gameplayarts is pleased to present Playa, a survey of Mexico-based artists informed by post-Internet worldbuilding. This summer, Los Angeles and its seasonal tourists are invited to immerse themselves in an exotic, simulated paradise. Playa unfolds as an ironic theater of Western desires, mirroring commercial worldbuilding logic to transform the gallery space into a faux Mexican beach resort. This setting authentically reflects a yearning for foreign utopias, weaving nostalgia and romantic idealism into an interactive dreamscape. The works of Mexican multidisciplinary artists Alonso Cedillo (Mexico City), Murakit (Mexico City), Caro Lucero (Mexico City), Fernando Gress Muñoz (Mexico City), Alicia Valladeres (Mexico City), Juanna Pedro (Xochimilco), and Clutch (Guadalajara) reinterpret popular visual culture through various appropriations. Each artist offers their unique critique of Western imagination through post-Internet practices, creating a multidimensional showcase encompassing video games, digital art, drawings, and Internet-based curatorial projects like Patadas de Ahogadx from Centro Cultural Kappa (Guadalajara) and Neotortillería (Guanajuato). Typically a "luxury" attraction site, the resort blurs the line between high and low culture, resulting in a critical awareness of kitsch that emerges from placing objects of common culture in formal contexts. The invited artists draw on digital aesthetics of the 1990s when U.S.-transferred pop culture hit a cultural apex in Mexico. Caricatures of the appropriative West, stemming from video games and Japanese manga, resonate deeply within the Mexican collective subconscious raised in Web 1.0. This dynamic blend of nostalgic idealism and transnational internet aesthetics subverts the gallery space, positioning the Mexican landscape in direct confrontation with Western sensibilities.