Pints and pixels: Video game art comes to BrewDog

Taylor Smith
Thu, 03 Oct 2019 03:05:03 +0000
Arts & Life, Events, Fine Arts, food & drink, News, alcohol, art, bar, beer, brew, Brewdog, brewing, charity, concept art, exhibition, Extra life, gallery, gallery hop, Kentucky, livestream, saturday, short north, tap, twin cities, vga gallery, vga gallery reader, video game, video game art gallery, video games

BrewDog Short North will host an exhibition of video games art from VGA Gallery on Oct. 5. Credit: Courtesy of TNS

Video games will get the gallery treatment on BrewDog Short North’s walls this weekend.

BrewDog will host an exhibition of video game art Saturday during October’s Short North Gallery Hop, with a portion of the night’s beer sales going to a good cause.

The exhibition will be presented by Video Game Art Gallery, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization that fosters appreciation for video games and their cultural importance through exhibitions, educational programs and a scholarly publication called VGA Reader, according to the organization’s website.

“Our mission is to support artists who create video games,” Chaz Evans, VGA Gallery co-founder and director of exhibitions and programs, said.

The exhibition at BrewDog will display a fine art print collection, comprised of a combination of concept art and screenshots from video games that VGA Gallery has collected since 2013, Evans said.

VGA Gallery’s goal is to “show the audience something that could have been missed while playing the games,” Evans said. He added that VGA Gallery reaches out to video game artists that provide interesting visual displays and deserve attention.

The exhibition will “try to communicate and understand our lives and our everyday worlds,” Evans said.

Evans said the exhibition has previously traveled to Kentucky and the Twin Cities region of Minnesota.

Evans, a gamer who began playing at a young age, said video games helped him find a different view of the world.

“I wasn’t satisfied with finishing them or winning them. Competition was interesting but I realized there was something else going on,” Evans said. “Different kinds of ideas, particular messages, even frameworks for how to view the world were coming out of the products.”

Michael Reed, managing editor of the VGA Gallery Reader, said video game art differs from other fine art forms such as paintings because the audience is able to interact with the final product in a more direct way.

“You’re actually holding a controller, controlling the action, controlling the narrative,” Reed said.

According to its Facebook page, BrewDog will donate $1 for every draft beer sold between 5 and 7 p.m. Saturday to VGA Gallery and Extra Life, a charity based in Utah that works to support Children’s Miracle Network hospitals through art exhibitions and gaming marathons.

Evans said VGA Gallery also supports artists by allowing art displayed at the exhibition to be sold.

VGA Gallery’s exhibition will be hosted from 5 to 11:30 p.m. Saturday at BrewDog Short North on North High Street. VGA Gallery is open to the public.