Museum Folkwang shows Rafaël Rozendaal’s digital art from 21 April

Essen, 20.04.2023 – From 21 April to 20 August 2023, Museum Folkwang will be showing digital and analogue works by NFT artist Rafaël Rozendaal in a large-scale exhibition. In his abstract works, Rozendaal often deals with art historical subjects and pioneers of 20th-century art. Color, Code, Communication is the first monographic exhibition of the New York-based artist in a European museum and will be accompanied by an international symposium on NFT art (21–22 April 2023).

Rafaël Rozendaal (*1980) is one of the best-known players in digital art worldwide. As early as the beginning of the 2000s, the artist conceived works in the form of websites as unique pieces. He develops his ideas from drawings and sketches, which are the distributed on various digital distribution channels through programming and coding. With his works, Rozendaal reaches a broad audience worldwide beyond conventional forms of presentation.

For a good three years now, he has been realising his art as NFTs. Non-fungible tokens are based on a technology that verifies digital art as unique in a forgery-proof list of data records (blockchain). Each token has an owner, with the information and the work itself accessible to all on various digital platforms at all times. In his latest NFT projects, Rozendaal combines pictorial motifs and themes from recent art history with current forms of communication and developments in blockchain. In his artistic work, he develops a visually fascinating visual language, both for digital space and for site-specific and urban contexts. Museum Folkwang is now showing the artist’s works extensively for the first time in immersive installations, site-specific murals, browser windows, artist books, public space and social media.

A highlight of the exhibition is the presentation of 81 Horizons (2021) in the museum’s large exhibition hall. The 81-part NFT series is presented across 1,000 square metres as a walk-in video installation that invites contemplative strolling and transforms the viewing experience on screens and in browser windows into an exhibition situation. In it, Rozendaal plays with the art historical topos of the horizon line and, for each of his abstractions, compresses two monochrome colour fields into files only 0.3 KB in size. By transferring and scaling the NFT series to screens in the museum space, it becomes a physical experience for the audience.

Beyond the large exhibition hall, Rozendaal presents his works at other locations inside and outside of the museum building. In the wide corridors of the Chipperfield building, he places six Cabinet NFTs (2022) as expansive murals. Rozendaal adapts eleven websites (2000–2018) and NFTs (2019–2022) especially for the multi-screen presentation in the museum’s foyer. In the film box, Rozendaal installs his NFT generator Polychrome Music (2022), which produces infinite animations of sounds and colours. In the collection presentation New Worlds, every day a new NFT from Rozendaal’s Homage series (2022) enters into direct dialogue with colour field paintings from the museum’s collection projected on a large square LED wall. Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop also presents two selected NFT variants by Rafaël Rozendaal that make reference to Josef Albers (Homage #43, Homage #49) in its collection rooms. At Berliner Platz, five digital works will be shown for the duration of the exhibition on the large NewsWall and five more on the media staircase in the foyer of the FUNKE Group’s main building.

Color, Code, Communication invites visitors to engage with new digital art forms and will be expanded by a multifaceted mediation programme including live actions such as Bring your own Beamer, guided tours, talks, AR workshops, an audio tour as well as digital formats such as hybrid studio visits with Rozendaal during the New Now Festival. In addition, a mini website makes detailed information on Rafaël Rozendaal’s work groups accessible via QR code.

At the two-day symposium devoted to “New Landscapes – NFTs and the Museum” (21–22 April 2023), internationally renowned artists, curators, scholars and bloggers will discuss the interfaces between the museum world, digital arts and Web3. They will provide exciting insights into their projects and invite visitors to virtual studio visits.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the artist’s book 81 Horizons. Rafaël Rozendaal published by Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König (€48 museum edition, 500 copies).

Supported by Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Rheinland, Sparkasse Essen, and Savings Banks Cultural Fund of the German Savings Banks Association.
With the help of the Mondriaan Fund.

Information

RAFAËL ROZENDAAL
Color, Code, Communication
21 April to 20 August 2023
Admission: €8/€5