Laurel Stevens
My painting is based on the Polyhedron – an mysterious structure – from the Russian horror game Pathologic and explores how its impossible architecture relates to Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the fold. Rather than reinterpreting the building’s exterior, I focused on its interior, expressing the way it challenges conventional ideas of space, perspective, and orientation. The winding staircases, interconnected walls, and repeating openings create an environment that appears to be constantly unfolding. Instead of guiding the viewer towards a single destination, the architecture encourages continuous movement through shifting viewpoints and recursive spaces. The composition reflects the building’s seemingly infinite interior, with descending staircases and layered structures suggesting that it contains more space than should be physically possible, reinforcing its dreamlike and impossible nature. Handwritten marks embedded within the walls represent memory and thought becoming part of the architecture itself, while the purple colour palette creates an atmospheric, otherworldly environment. Together, these elements emphasise its mysterious qualities and resistance to logical geometry. I feel my painting presents the building as a visual expression of Deleuze’s idea of the fold, where space is not fixed or divided into separate parts but exists as a continuous process of transformation, perception, and unfolding.
