Rafaël Rozendaal

Abstract Browsing 20 06

Home Alone, a book/edition/project with Three Star Books

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.

Shadow Objects Sculpture Park

Shadow Objects Sculpture Park
A 3D exhibition for Tokyo Art Book Fair

Mechanical Painting (laptop)

laptop rafael rozendaal

Mechanical Painting 20 03 02 (Laptop)
Enamel on Steel
170 x 120 cm
On view at Deitch Gallery New York until November

Online exhibition at Site Gallery (Sheffield)

Site Gallery is delighted to be collaborating with Rafaël Rozendaal on a commission and his first UK solo exhibition, Websites, due to open September 23, 2021.

In the lead-up to his exhibition, Rozendaal will release new works every two months exclusively on Site Gallery’s website. The first work is titled Noneither.

In Rafaël’s words:

I make websites-as-artworks. They are concise moving images, generative, random, colorful, moody… I hope. I started making websites in 1999. The internet was a great place then, the early days before the web became corporate. It was an optimistic time full of promise. It was very exciting.

My idea was simple: I did not want to make a website that showed “IRL” documentation, I wanted to make websites that take advantage of the possibilities of the browser. These works are generative moving images. They are not videos or animations. They are code based algorithms. They behave like a fountain or waterfall, always doing the same thing but never repeating itself.

Since 1999, I’ve made about 120 websites, each in their own domain name (.com)
The domain name is the title of the work, and at the same time it’s the location of the work. Domain names are easy to remember, so whenever you want to see one of my works, all you have to do is remember a domain name.

I have exhibited my websites in physical space. Sometimes in galleries or museums, and sometimes on digital billboards in public space. I think websites should behave like gas: they can fill up any potential space. Whether you are seeing my work on a smartwatch or on a 200 meter billboard, each instance of the work is an authentic viewing experience. The work exists in infinite multitudes, any place, any time, as long as you have an internet connection.

For the exhibition “websites” which will launch at Site Gallery in September 2021, I am making a new group of concise moving images. The exhibition was supposed to launch in 2020, but Covid…
Ironically, my work has always suited a locked down life. Now that we spend much more time at home, it seemed like a good idea to launch the works on the web first, and show them later in installation form at Site Gallery. These works are dead ends. There are no links, there is no information, there is only movement. You are presented with these works and once you are there, all you can do is stare.

Quiet, Calm, Staring – online exhibition at upstream.gallery

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…”