An ouroboros of vacuity that is immune to its own failure: Kaws online at the Serpentine Gallery

The second most interesting thing about this digital exhibition is that it is not for art critics like me. I first had to download Fortnite, before bumbling through the introductions and menus for roughly half an hour, accidentally playing a match for a few minutes before figuring out how to access the ‘island’ in the game where one sees the exhibition.

Once inside, Kaws’s usual character statues and cartoonish abstractions looked much worse than the photos online because my utilitarian laptop doesn’t have the processing power to run the game at high resolution. Needless to say, the recreation of the gallery space in the game is nothing like being in a gallery. It’s merely a literal imitation that provides no immersion; a slideshow would have been more captivating. In short, from my critic’s perspective, the only thing I will remember from this experience is a feeling of mild inconvenience.

But the experience is intended for gamers, i.e. people beneath the usual age demographic for those with an interest in fine art. Press for the show makes much of the number of potential visitors: an average Serpentine exhibition is usually visited by about 35,000 people; Fortnite has more than 400 million registered player accounts. So Brian Donnelly (KAWS) wants to reach an audience both younger and larger than the conventional art world, which is not necessarily an objectionable aspiration, and he is well positioned to accomplish that given his uniquely pop-cultural cachet as an artist.

However, I’m not sure if the exhibition is any more appealing to gamers than it is to me; I find the art underwhelming from an artistic perspective and I imagine gamers will find it underwhelming from a gaming perspective.