Courtesy the artist and Whitney Museum
While the Whitney Biennial isn’t set to open its 2026 edition to the public until Sunday, anyone can get a sneak peek at one work in the show: Camoflux Recall Grotto.
The work, a video game by Colombian artist Leo Castañeda, is available to play on the web from any computer. For the work, Castañeda hand-painted all the imagery over the course of a decade. Inspired by the Brazilian Amazon forest and the South Florida Everglades, Camoflux Recall Grotto asks players to cultivate a garden in this “primordial landscape.” In contrast to more typical video games that involve heavy action and progression, Camoflux Recall Grotto moves at a “meditative, cozy” pace as players cultivate seeds “collecting ‘liquid turbulence’ (water) and ‘electromagnetic intensity’ (sunlight) to nourish what the artist calls ‘cyberflora,’” according to a description.
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As curator Marcela Guerrero—who co-curated with Drew Sawyer—told Robb Report, “We obviously love the steadfastness. Unlike typically violent examples of the genre, this is a single-player game where you’re collecting resources, and it’s about mutualism and working with the environment.”
An interesting concept, made even more interesting by the wide online accessibility of the work, but not exactly unprecedented in video games. The 2016 game Stardew Valley, in which players manage a farm and live life in a small town, launched an entire genre of “cozy games” that encourage harmony with the environment and a slow pace.
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