There's something undeniably bitter about the whole experience of Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective. I think a version of me from a couple years ago would have found this at least a little interesting, but at this point all I see is just irony on top of irony on top of irony. The issue with internet irony and post-irony is that it's a distancer, it's a deliberate refusal to be genuine even for a second.

But even when you pull it apart it's just, like, high school nihilism. Ok dude, art sucks, life sucks, we're all gonna die, whatever man. Ironically, in the traditional sense, this game spends most of its time shitting on what it perceives to be "stuck-up postmodern art that thinks it's smarter than it is", while also being a piece of postmodern art that has pretty much nothing interesting or emotionally resonant to say. If you want to see postmodern artists take the piss out of themselves just watch The Comedy (2012) instead.

I have a feeling my soft spot for this game is very much based off my very personal connection to the specific James Turrell exhibition this game features.

So for context - this game specifically concerns the massively popular 2013 James Turrell retrospective located at LACMA in Los Angeles. I grew up in LA and was just beginning my senior year of high school at the time. I grew up in a solidly upper middle class community where attaining cultural capital and going to a prestigious college were the primary aspirations that parents had for their kids and that most kids had for themselves by extension.

Given this context one would imagine that going to the big ticket art exhibition in town would be popular but good god I cannot overstate just how popular and lauded this exhibition was. For a few months in the fall of 2013 basically every kid at my high school as well as their parents were talking about and posting about the god damn James Turrell exhibition almost non stop. For anyone not familiar James Turrell does what could be called light art in layman’s terms (my language when it comes to fine art). His works are very accessible and aesthetically pleasing and create an experience closer to an immersive art installation than a traditional exhibition. His 2013 exhibition predates but creates an experience for lay viewers that is shockingly similar to the heavily corporatized and Instagram friendly “art experiences” that would come to dominate the landscape of big American cities in the 2010s. The way most people talked and posted about this exhibition was also very similar to the way they would end talking and posting about faux art installations like “the museum of ice cream” some years later. The James Turrell exhibition, however, obviously has a lot more going for it than one of these Instagram experiences. I’m not trying to say his work is crap or disingenuous or anything - just that the way people talked about and approached the exhibition felt very similar to how they would talk about and approach aforementioned “Instagram art experiences”. But anyway - the exhibition was massively overhyped and there was a very real sense of FOMO surrounding it. People didn’t want to miss out on what seemed like this crazy aesthetic experience where you’d be transported to a surreal and abstract world and also didn’t want to miss out on the cultural capital to be gained by “having seen the James Turrell exhibition”.

Is this game partially responding to the geographically and culturally specific hype surrounding the exhibition? Maybe I guess? I have no idea. It does however immediately make me remember this somewhat comical time period from my youth, and I have a definite soft spot for it because of that. I saw this exhibition on a second date with the person who ended up becoming my first ever serious partner, which heightens the nostalgia factor for me a lot. For all the ridiculousness surrounding this exhibition seeing it in real life was a very memorable and frankly beautiful experience. Given its sheer popularity it’s also something that’s probably associated with fond memories for a lot of people. I hope Bubsy at least had a fun time at the exhibition like I did :’ )

A somewhat relevant aside: I had a friend in high school whose family owned this very post modern looking house. In the entranceway there was this strange rectangular hole in the wall leading to a small white room that would light up with bright green light if you flipped a switch. Nobody in the family knew what this room was for and they used it to store piles of literal junk for the entire time I knew them. After the exhibition got popular this family realized that their junk closet was very similar to the James Turrell pieces on exhibit at LACMA and did some investigating into its origins. It turned out the rectangular hole was indeed a James Turrell installation and they very quickly cleaned the junk out and bragged to everyone about having a James Turrell in their house. The story was even publishing in the LA Times. I don’t have any incisive commentary about this event. It’s just something I find supremely ridiculous and quite funny and also very depressing all at the same time.