Markus Neidel: Way of the Sheep Monday, July 28, 2008

Markus Neidel: Way of the Sheep evokes a surreal blend of horror and joy. What's especially intriguing about this virtual painting is the way that it takes unique advantage of being run on a computer in order to produce a seamless and infinitely scrolling nightmarescape.

The sheep that you count as you drift off to sleep fall into the dreamworld. They tumble past the guardian rats into a dark metal pipe, where a robot then shears the wool from them, creating piles of fluffy clouds on the left and pink pigs on the right. From there, a grinning confectioner pours piggy pink coloring into a vat with the fleece to whip up and sell as phantasmagorial cotton candy to troglodytic children for a dollar. The happy children tumble obliviously into the lair of the insects that drain the pink sweetness from their brains and grow their own, new, white fuzz on their bloated abdomens, which is sheared and knitted by a massive machine back into the sheep that you count as you drift off to sleep....