Jon Rafman
Jon Rafman (born 1981) is an artist, filmmaker, and essayist. His work centers around the concept of the impact of technology on contemporary consciousness. His artwork has gained international attention and was exhibited in 2015 at Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (Montreal).[1] He is widely known for exhibiting found images from Google Street View (9-Eyes).
Contents
Biography
Rafman was born in Montreal, Canada. He holds an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.A. in Philosophy and Literature from McGill University. He lives in Montreal.
Work
Rafman's work focuses on technology and digital media, and emphasizes the ways in which it distances us from ourselves. He offers a way to look at the melancholy in our modern social interactions, communities and virtual realities from an accessible place of humour and irony. His films and art utilize personal moments intended to reveal how pop-culture ephemera and advertising media shape our desires and threaten to define our being.[citation needed]
He has explored the identities and history of some of our most common virtual worlds— Google Earth, Google Street View and Second Life.[citation needed]
Though Rafman rarely takes a moral stance toward the messaging behind his art, it consistently asks us to evaluate what it means to be human in the context of these new and ambiguous digital realms. Rafman celebrates and critiques contemporary culture, while at the same time revealing the origins of modern loneliness and alienation.[citation needed]
An ongoing project of Rafman's involves a tour around the virtual universe of Second Life, which is hosted by his avatar Kool-Aid Man. The work deals with how users employ creative exploits in order to bring to life an idealized self and entertain sexual fetishes in the virtual world.[citation needed]
In September 2013, Rafman collaborated with Brooklyn-based experimental musician Oneohtrix Point Never on a film to accompany the release of R Plus Seven (Warp).[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
- Annals of Time Lost, Future Gallery, Berlin, April 2013[citation needed]
- A Man Digging, Seventeen Gallery, London, May 2013[citation needed]
- You Are Standing in an Open Field, Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, September 2013[citation needed]
Group exhibitions
- Rencontres d’Arles
- New Jpegs, Johan Berggren Gallery in Malmo, Sweden[citation needed]
- Free, New Museum, New York[citation needed]
- Speculations on Anonymous Materials, The Fridericianum, Kassel[citation needed]
- New Museum, 2010[citation needed]
- The Saatchi Gallery, 2012[citation needed]
- Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, 2010[citation needed]
- Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, 2012[citation needed]
- Palais de Tokyo, 2012[citation needed]
- The Fridericianum, 2013[citation needed]
Publications with contributions by Rafman
- Communicating the Archive: Physical Migration. Regional State Archives in Gothenburg. Rafman's work was included, as was an essay by Sandra Rafman, on the archival impulses of Rafman's work.[12]
References
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- Official website
- Rhizome Profile
- Saatchi Profile
- Artnet Profile
- ArtFacts Profile
- Zach Feuer Gallery Artist Page
- Interview with Jon Rafman by Aids-3D
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- ↑ Karl-Magnus Johansson (2013), Communicating the Archive : Physical Migration, The Regional State Archives in Gothenburg. ISBN 978-91-979866-3-2
