Whirling Wheels

Michael Coppelov’s artwork stems from an attempt to understand and map the interconnection of our world using Deleuze and Guattari’s Rhizome as a model. Real-world geographical locations are key to this with each painting linked to somewhere Michael has been: French motorway service stations, Spanish and Alpine road tunnels and the Rome Metro network to name a few.

The paintings use an isometric grid which both elevates the viewer to a god’s-eye position and removes horizons and perspectives. It was widely used in 1990s computer gaming as a rudimentary device in which to construct a landscape which could be potentially extended in all directions beyond the computer screen – or in this case, the edges of the painting.

The works here reference these iconic games alongside the railway posters of the 1950s and 60s which appealed to travellers in the pre-Beeching railway age about the potential to quickly be somewhere else. Other works use the motifs from Transport Tycoon to describe the endless road networks of the world and the potential to disappear under a mountain only to emerge on the other side.