Pac Man, 2024

Catherine Gran  

Nécropole de Pac Man.

In Nécropole de Pac Man, Catherine Gran transforms one of the earliest icons of digital entertainment into the form of an ancient funerary stele. The familiar maze of the arcade game is reimagined as an engraved monument where ghosts, fruit, symbols, and the words “Game Over" appear like archaeological inscriptions. A language once made of pixels and movement is fixed here in stone-like permanence.

Gran's meticulous ink technique is essential to the work's effect. Through delicate cross-hatching and subtle tonal variation, the flat logic of the screen acquires texture, weight, and historical depth. What belonged to speed, repetition, and play is rendered with the gravity of a relic excavated from a lost civilization.

The work reflects on memory and obsolescence in digital culture. Pac-Man, built for endless replay, is here stilled and monumentalized. Gran suggests that even the most ephemeral images of entertainment can enter collective memory, where they survive as enduring symbols long after the game itself has ended.