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 Adina Glickstein for Spike Art.
We talk about domain names, nfts, exhibitions and opportunities.
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
Silence is a public artwork I created for PXL Gallery, Canada’s largest lowres art installation. Only 28 x 88 giant pixels. Photos by Gus Sarino.
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
Upstream Gallery proudly presents its online platform upstream.gallery dedicated to host a new series of online exhibitions. These exhibitions will be developed, curated and participated by artists that belong to the top of the digital art world. The first exhibition is curated by Rafaël Rozendaal: Quiet, Calm, Staring
Participating artists: Claude Closky, Constant Dullaart, JODI, Olia Lialina, Jan Robert Leegte, Peter Luining, Jonas Lund, Guthrie Lonergan, Jonathan Puckey / Moniker, Evan Roth, Claudia Maté, Michael Manning, Rafaël Rozendaal.
“We have been online before the crisis and we’ll be here after.”
For this first exhibition Rafaël Rozendaal made a selection of 13 artists who use websites as a medium. He chose to select websites that require no interaction, websites that are endpoints. No information, no links, they are destinations.
As the artist mentions:
“…Art is a place for reflection and contemplation. Quiet, calm, staring. Trying to observe without too many thoughts. We are used to viewing art that way, but the internet is a different place. The internet is fast paced, jumping from link to link, from impression to impression.
Websites are ubique (ubiquitous) objects, they can exist in many places simultaneously. It might sound obvious, and we take it for granted, but I think now more than ever we understand why websites are a very special place for artists to make work. Websites are different from any other medium… they use computational processes to generate living moving images. Browsing them has it’s own rhythm, it’s own flow of time, different from video, TV or cinema…”
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
