free from expectation
free from distraction
free from approval
free from convention
free from obligation
free from utility
free from compromise
free from agreement
free from competition
free from hierarchy
free from fear
81 Horizons is a collection of 81 fully on-chain landscapes. Each work consists of a unique combination of two colored rectangles, hand picked by the artist. Released by Upstream Gallery, smart contract programming by Alberto Granzotto, produced by left gallery.
I don’t really understand the impulse to own art. I love empty spaces. I love being in an empty space. It is the most inspiring to me because there is nothing else to do except finding new ideas. Ownership is a prison of obligations. But I need your money so I can make whatever I want. Because you want to own I can create. I don’t judge your cravings, I am happy that you take on the burden of storage. Take it out of my hands so I can make something new.
Please take care of the work and give me some money so I can buy soba noodles and get back to work. Money makes me happy. Lots of money and few things. Money in the bank makes me feel free. I realize i’m not free at all. The more money I have the poorer I feel. The more there is to lose. I made good money this year, more than I ever have. I have no idea what to do with it other than to keep it in a jar and feed it. The money makes me feel safe yet i’m not.
art is the intensification of perception
art is the moment between realizing and understanding
art is research without aim
art is the area between thoughts and feelings
art is the tension between a personality and a material
art is not mysterious because there is no solution
art does not have any reason to exist
art comes from solitary curiosity
the serious artist does more thinking than doing
the serious artist provokes but does not offend
the serious artist knows everyone but doesn’t talk to anyone
the serious artist does not talk about money but has lots of it
the serious artist is a mystery
the serious artist does not give answers
the serious artist does not create
the serious artist does not explain
the serious artist edits
the serious artist knows how to say no
the serious artist doesn’t need you
the serious artist laughs only at the right jokes
the serious artist does not own a tv
the serious artist only travels for work
the serious artist does research
the serious artist enjoys encounters
the serious artist is often alone
the serious artist avoids public transportation
the serious artist rarely smiles
the serious artist is concerned
the serious artist questions authority
the serious artist is comfortable around power
the serious artist is great at dinners
the serious artist dresses in black
Exhibiting the Internet
An Interview with Rafaël Rozendaal
by Adina Glickstein
November 2021
Rafaël Rozendaal has been making digital art for two decades, and he’s unfazed by the rise of Web3. In this conversation with Spike, he explores how websites are like poetry, dishes some lessons in exhibiting digital work, and argues in favour of keeping the punk spirit alive in NFTs.
Adina Glickstein: What lessons have you learned, throughout your career, about showing net art? Could some of these now be applied to crypto?
Rafaël Rozendaal: I think it’s different for different artists. Cryptoart is often focused on the personal collection, so it’s more of a question of home display. When it comes to physical exhibitions, the goal is not to display works neatly like at an art fair – because their sales are natively digital. So then, why not treat it as a native medium and just go crazy? Don’t be too conservative.
Mechanical Paintings at Upstream Gallery
October 30 – December 18, 2021
photos by Gert-Jan van Rooij
Permanent Distraction
Site Gallery Sheffield
September 23 – December 23, 2021
Photos by Jules Lister
New book/edition/project
available at Three Star Books
Rafaël Rozendaal artist’s studio is his home and vice versa. Rozendaal lives most of his artist life within hard disks. After designing and programming on a computer the websites he is famous for — Rozendaal’s work is uploaded on distant servers and experienced by millions of internet viewers.
When we met again — many years after the artist collaborated with onestar press in 2003 — we knew that the challenge to publish — what Rozendaal usually proposes to the viewer as an interactive digital experience — was going to be an inspiring one.
Soon after RR posted a video tour of his studio/home on @newrafael and presented the simple colorful vector diagrams the artist is using as starting points for his websites, we asked Rozendaal to think with us on an adaptation of these digital sketches on paper with ink.
Between hard-edge abstraction and representation of landscapes, architecture and usual objects, we determined that RR’s computer drawings would translate well with silkscreen.
Quickly RR sent us a selection of files that we laid out in a large format with a landscape ratio — recalling those of the computer screen — with a selection of plain colors that would face the diagrams on the double page spreads. The very next day the artist sent us the title of his project: “HOME ALONE”. His ability to make things fluid embodies RR’s artistic strength. Now, as the work was transferred to our studio and our our goal to preserve the ethereal and immaterial quality of these digital works, we suggested the artist print on a very soft paper with the minimum bulk possible to create a fifty-six page signature stitched together in a manner that would make the book’s manipulation almost impossible unless the volume is presented flat on a table.
The path between an abstract idea and it’s materialization is a difficult task that every artist has to achieve in order to create a tangible experience for the viewer. In the case of RR this path is reduced to the minimum and the phrase: (coined by Marshall McLuhan) “The Medium Is The Message” seemed perfect and all along the production of “HOME ALONE” it never left us.
The cover and the interior pages are printed on the same paper and bound with a color cotton thread. The book is housed in a hot stamped clamshell custom box (with unique combinations of colors) that also serves as a display device.
Note that the font used on the cover and the colophon of “HOME ALONE” is designed by the artist adapted from an old cartoon.
Mechanical Painting 20 03 02 (Laptop)
Enamel on Steel
170 x 120 cm
On view at Deitch Gallery New York until November
Discrete Objects
Upstream Gallery 2019
Photos by Gert-Jan van Rooij
A selection of websites on the facade of Centraal Museum Utrecht
Curated by Bart Rutten
Photos by Gert-Jan van Rooij
“Random Fear with Mirrors”
at the exhibition “Trouble in Paradise, collection Rattan Chadha”
Kunsthal, Rotterdam
Photos by Job Janssen & Jan Adriaans
Don’t do too much
exhibition at Postmasters Gallery, New York
2019
Photos by Tamas Banovich & Kyle Knodell
Freedom of Movement, curated by Karen Archey
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2018
Photos by Peter Tijhuis
