Tic-tac-toe’ is a paper-and-pencil game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The player who succeeds in placing three of their marks in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row is the winner. It is a solved game with a forced draw assuming best play from both players.[1]

 ‘The act of painting is like a trial where all the roles are lived by one person. It’s as if the painting has to prove its right to exist.’[2]  There is a simple strategy to ensure a win in Tic-tac-toe, but if the opponent is one and the same person all strategies render themselves futile and oblique. No longer a challenge set up to win according to a set of clear rules, the game itself shifts into an indeterminate, shaky, slippery zone, where the only duel left to win is that against one’s own cognitive capacity. An absurd pursuit. The activity of making is just that; a relentless process of questioning one's own decisions, a territory occupied by one player alone with a modest set of moves but an infinite field of vision.

Curated by Karolina Albricht and Gabriela Giroletti

[1] in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic-tac-toe

[2] Philip Guston, Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations.