Boss Key (Injustice 2, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Rocket League, Apex Legends, Call of Duty: WWII and Star Trek Online), 2023
Ink and acrylic on canvas, 3D printed PLA plastic, acrylic spray paint
39 x 72 x 6.5 cm
Boss Key (Injustice 2, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Rocket League, Apex Legends, Call of Duty: WWII and Star Trek Online) (2023) was originally produced for Sunday School, a solo exhibition by Bob Bicknell-Knight at Number 1 Main Road, Berlin, DE, 29th April – 23rd May 2023.
Each painting within the Boss Key series is made up of a variety of different loot boxes from real world video games, transformed into intricate patterns and digitally dragged across the canvas, referencing the victory screen of the video game Microsoft Solitaire, originally released in 1990, where the playing cards appear to fall off each stack and bounce off the screen. The painting is a hybrid, beginning as a digitally edited fabricated image. The image was then printed onto canvas, stretched and then painted onto with acrylic paint, with the offline artist’s hand interacting with the original online digital image. The sides are colour matched, and the front of the canvas is partially painted onto. The work is shown in an elaborate 3D printed frame, taking inspiration from traditional frames from the 18th century, deliberately drawing attention away from the subject of the work and emphasising the artificial nature of the painted representation.
The original creator of Microsoft’s Solitaire, Wes Cherry, included a boss key in the first build of the game in 1988 that would, at the tap of a key, switch your computer screen from the game to a fake Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. A boss key is a keyboard shortcut used in PC games to hide the program quickly, possibly displaying a special or fake screen that appears to be a normal productivity program.
Cherry was asked to remove the boss key from the final release of Microsoft’s Solitaire, but the idea that the game, and in turn video games in general, would become so obsessively played that you would ultimately end up needing to hide your interest from those around you, is increasingly prescient in today’s world of loot boxes and the insertion of gambling mechanics into video game worlds.
Boss Key (Injustice 2, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Rocket League, Apex Legends, Call of Duty: WWII and Star Trek Online) has been included in the following exhibitions:
– Art in Conversation II. At 108 Fine Art, Harrogate, UK, 6th July – 31st August 2024.
– Sunday School. At Number 1 Main Road, Berlin, DE, 29th April – 23rd May 2023.
BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT 