Artist opens 'Christ Killa' exhibit*

Invites audience to shoot hordes of 'homicidal Jesus' figures

Posted: April 14, 2007

A Los Angeles artist opened an exhibit this week called "Christ Killa"
in which the audience is invited to participate in a video game and
shoot hordes of "homicidal Jesus Christs."

Digital and video artist Eric Medine describes his work – a video game
linked to projectors and TV monitors – as the "ultimate arbitration
between politics and Christianity," notes bloggers Sondra K and Michelle
Malkin.

The game landscape "is filled with Googled images of Christian
propaganda posters, religious shrines such as St. Peter's in Rome, and
clichéd representations of Christ who constantly mumbles messages of
tolerance and compassion," says a news release.

"The audience is invited to participate in the carnage by playing the
video game and watching short videos of the game in action."

The winner, with the most "Christ kills," will be awarded a trophy.

The exhibit, which began Thursday, runs until May 12 at the Niche.LA
Video Art gallery in Los Angeles.

Medine's "artist's statement" on his work declares: "We all perceive the
influence of political power in the fluctuations of culture, economics,
and technology. The ebb and flow of religion can now be felt on the
video game screen."

The artist says he received an undergraduate degree from the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996 and a Masters at the Otis School of
Art and Design in Los Angeles in 2006. He has shown work in Southern
California at the 2005 Los Angeles Juried Exhibition, the Angels Gate
Art Center, the Greater L.A. MFA Exhibition in Long Beach and the Walled
Cities Gallery in San Pedro.

Explaining further his latest work, Medine said:

Religion, historically associated with spiritual and ethical growth, has
recently begun to incorporate the methods of political systems. This new
form of religion is praised as leaner, more efficient, more streamlined,
but what function does it provide? What happens when you remove the code
of ethics, messages of love and community, and compassion from religion
in order to implement a political agenda? This new hybrid takes the form
of a dazzling distraction, a marketing strategy, aggressive competition,
a worldview that divides everything into friend and enemy – all
characteristics of modern video games.

Malkin condemned the exhibit, equating it with controversial works
protested as religious bigotry, such as photographer Andres Serrano's
"Piss Christ," the Brooklyn Art Museum's Virgin Mary painting stained
with elephant dung and, most recently, the canceled "Chocolate Jesus"
statue slated for exhibit during Holy Week in New York City.