“Light” at MoMA
Light: Rafaël Rozendaal
Museum of Modern Art
November 16, 2024 – Spring 2025
Curated by Paola Antonelli
Photos by Jonathan Dorado
“Abstraction is the intensification of perception,” says Rafaël Rozendaal, an innovator in the realm of Internet-based art. Since the early 2000s, Rozendaal has produced vibrant animations that explore the aesthetic and conceptual possibilities of code, treating it as if it were paint. This installation presents a selection of his artworks, each sampled for two to three minutes.
Each work starts as a storyboard sketched on paper, which is then translated into code, into a program that occupies only a few kilobytes. The final form is an autonomous website powered by that algorithm, which generates the animation in real time.
Because Rozendaal has chosen the Internet as his canvas, his works exist within the browser’s flat yet multidimensional digital landscape. For the same reason, though they are held in private and public collections, his artworks are accessible to everybody online through their URLs. “I always wanted to make work that could be seen by anyone, anywhere, anytime,” the artist affirms. “I wanted to create work that gives the viewer a feeling of possibility.”
From the start, Rozendaal planned his websites to be robust enough to withstand the evolution of both software and hardware, and to be equally vivid at any screen resolution. The artworks adapt fluidly to any display, from a smartphone to the high-resolution LED screen—nearly twenty-five feet across—you are contemplating here. The result is a state of immersion so complete that it seems to merge with the physical world. As the artist explains, “I imagine we will live in a world where there is no difference
between a screen and any other surface.” Lean, light, and indestructible, his websites will still be there.
