Rafaël ROZENDAAL
'Looking at Something'
Rafaël ROZENDAAL
'Looking at Something'
2023
Art Collaboration Kyoto, Kyoto International Conference Center
Kyoto
Artist: Rafaël ROZENDAAL
Client: EDION Corporation
Curator: Code-a-Machine (KANAZAWA Kodama + MASUI Shinichiro)
Official Partner: Maruni Wood Industry Inc.
Special Cooperation: Takuro Someya Contemporary Art
Production: Twelve Inc.
Monitor provided by EDION Corporation / Sony Consumer Sales (Japan) Inc.
Photo: Kenryou GU / MATSUMI Takuya
- Art Consulting
- Curation/Planning
- Management/Coordination
Producing a Contemporary Art Exhibition in Response to the Client’s Vision
At Art Collaboration Kyoto, a prominent art fair in Kyoto, Code-a-Machine planned and produced the exhibition booth for EDION, the fair’s main partner company. We proposed artist Rafaël Rozendaal, whose works are inspired by the internet, for the strong resonance with EDION’s identity as an electronics retailer. Working closely with Rozendaal, Code-a-Machine oversaw the entire process from design to production management, transforming Rozendaal’s vision of art as “like gas or liquid appearing everywhere” into an immersive installation where art fills up a familiar living room. The furniture was generously provided by Maruni, one of Japan’s most esteemed furniture companies.
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Rafaël Rozendaal’s Looking at Something powered by EDION
Around 2000, Rafaël Rozendaal started posting his clear, graphic moving images online, seemingly inspired by the internet’s realm of infinite space and time. The animations that spring up like fountains, generated in real-time by code, are unlimited in their meaning to a specific region or age group but appear as universal images, bringing unfamiliar surprises and meditative sensations to the viewer.
Rozendaal’s work, which appears on any type of screen from computer screens to tablets to smartphones to monitors, is an apt example of his artistic concept of constantly being present and appearing in various times and places, much “like gas or liquid,” as he describes it himself. This idea is also reflected in his diverse range of activities, including physical lenticular paintings begun in the 2010s and haiku, which is the art of words.
Rozendaal is also a conceptual artist who has been thinking about the ownership of digital works long before they became widely known as NFTs. The works published on his domain are accessible to anyone, even after being sold and their ownership decided. The infinite space and time expressed in the works are spread around the world and delivered right to those who enjoy art.
At Art Collaboration Kyoto, Rozendaal’s website and NFT works will appear in an atmosphere evocative of the ordinary spaces in which we spend our daily lives. Through this installation, Rozendaal is telling us that art is always there, as long as we are aware of it.
(Text by Kodama Kanazawa, translated by Kei Ota)
Rafaël ROZENDAAL
Born in the Netherlands in 1980. Lives and Works in New York. A pioneer of the net art scene, Rozendaal is a visual artist who uses the internet as both his studio and his canvas. While he initially gained global prominence from his websites, Rozendaal has creatively utilized the internet—“the universal library”—to transcend these digital works into the physical world, be it his lenticular paintings, tapestries, and web installations. In recent years, he has also presented his work in the form of NFT. In 2018, Rozendaal held his first solo museum exhibition GENEROSITY at Towada Art Center in Aomori Prefecture, Japan. In 2023, his large solo exhibition “Color, Code, Communication” was held at Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Other recent major exhibitions include, among others, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (USA), Centre Pompidou, Paris (France), Dordrechts Museum (Netherlands), Kunsthal Rotterdam (Netherlands), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (USA). Publications include Home Alone (Three Star Books) and Everything, Always, Everywhere (Valiz).