Connor Gottfried’s panel works transform obsolete technology into illuminated, interactive sculptures that collapse the distance between art object and game console. Constructed from layers of acrylic or aluminum composite, each piece is precision-cut and assembled with spacers to create dimensional depth. Embedded screens, wiring, and controls allow the panels to function as playable devices, recasting the familiar forms of retro consoles into fully realized works of contemporary art.

Oversized and candy-colored in appearance, these works call back to the aesthetics of childhood, where plastic casings and glowing screens defined entire generations’ first encounters with technology. Gottfried embraces this nostalgia while elevating it, treating the game system not as a disposable tool of entertainment but as an enduring cultural artifact. Each panel becomes both a visual centerpiece and an active portal into the past, offering audiences the rare invitation to touch, play, and participate within the gallery context.

Beneath their playful surface, the panels probe deeper questions of memory, obsolescence, and the shifting role of technology in daily life. Once cutting-edge devices are now celebrated as sculptural relics, their circuitry and forms repurposed as the raw material for art. By embedding fully functional games, Gottfried ensures that the experience is not merely visual but visceral—an echo of countless hours spent in living rooms and arcades, reanimated in a fine art setting.

With their luminous palettes, tactile construction, and insistence on interaction, Gottfried’s panel works stand as conversation pieces that question the traditional boundaries of art. They are not only monuments to past technologies but also explorations of how play, memory, and design intersect in shaping collective identity. In each panel, Gottfried invites us to reconsider the objects we once took for granted, elevating them into timeless symbols of cultural imagination.