Jon Rafman makes environments, films, photographs, and sculptures that examine the blurring of the real and virtual. Much of his work focuses on melancholy in modern social interactions, especially within online communities and virtual realities, while still celebrating the beauty of these unique and often intimate expressions of self. As he says, “I’m with them, dancing in the shit.” An expression of solidarity with the virtual revellers who populate his work, from the denizens of Second Life to the furry fetishists of 4chan. Jon can be seen as a kind of amateur anthropologist, exploring the little-known subcultures of the deep web, pausing to sigh at the scenery of a virtual sublime. His work is made from a composite of materials, including video footage, images, texts and quotes that he encounters in his extensive internet research. Occasionally shocking and always engaging, his works force the viewer to enter into uncomfortable and unsettling psychological realms.
The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Grey Truth is now her painted toy; Yet still she turns her restless head:
Poor Magic effects a beautiful yet terrifying rendition of contemporary consciousness, gesturing towards civilisation's listless drift beyond the corporeal, and technology's infinite desire to penetrate and artificially replicate human essence. Computer-generated crowd simulations run berserk in dreamlike repetition, while a 3D endoscopic journey takes us through the body's most intimate passages.
Part live-action footage, video game sequences, simulated chat, poetic voiceover and virtual landscape, Neon Parallel 1996 is in Rafman’s own words an attempt at creating a “lost vaporwave classic”.
From 2008-2011, Kool-Aid Man gave tours of the massively multiplayer online game, Second Life. Second Life has no objective, and most of the content on it is exclusively created by players. Kool-Aid Man traverses this seemingly infinite user-created landscape from unpopulated desolate areas, areas replicating beautiful versions of reality, and many places users created as a zone to interact with other users. Several places Kool-Aid Man finds are perverse, serving specific subcultures or fetishes. Kool-Aid Man closely resembles the cartoon character from the popular American drink mix.
Still Life (Betamale) confronts some of humanity’s newer and more obsessive activities, a deconstructed narrative of all things that may be unique to the web. The video paints a clear picture of the stereotype we associate with 4chan users: smelly men who obsessively consume, produce, and share socially unaccepted media, never AFK. By splicing together footage and images from these online communities, Rafman places the viewer at the centre of a mind-numbing search for meaning in some of the most socially questionable places.
2017 - 2018 Dream Journals 16 - 17, Sprüth Magers, Berlin
2016 I have ten thousand compound eyes and each is named suffering, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
2016 Jon Rafman, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster
2016 Jon Rafman, Carl Kostyál, Stockholm
2015 Jon Rafman, Zabludowicz Collection, London
2015 Jon Rafman, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal
2015 Grand Tour, Feuer/Mesler, New York
2014 The End of the End of the End, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO
2014 Jon Rafman: Mainsqueeze, Plymouth Rock, Zurich
2014 Hope Springs Eternal, galerie antoine ertaskiran, Toronto
2014 Hope Springs Eternal II, galerie antoine ertaskiran, Montréal
2013 Annals of Lost Time, Future Gallery, Berlin
2013 Remember Carthage, New Online Art, New Museum, NY
2013 Remember Carthage, galerie antoine ertaskiran, Montréal
2013 You Are Standing in An Open Field, Zach Feuer Gallery, New York
2013 A Man Digging, Seventeen Gallery, London
2012 Jon Rafman, online exhibition, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
2012 The Nine Eyes of Google Street View, Saatchi Gallery, London
2012 Mirror Sites, International Art Object Galleries and M+B Gallery, Los Angeles
2012 Nine Eyes of Google Street View, Angell Gallery, Toronto
2012 MMXII BNPJ, American Medium, New York
2011 Brand New Paint Job Extended, PM Gallery, Berlin
2011 Brand New Paint Job, Fabio Paris Gallery, Brescia
2010 The Age Demanded, Golden Age, Chicago, IL
2018 Alone together, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal
2018 Blind Faith: Zeitgenössische Kunst zwischen Intuition und Reflexion, Haus der Kunst, Munich
2018 Our Thing, galerie antoine eraskiran, Montréal
2018 Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, ICA – The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston, MA
2017 ARS 17: Hello world!, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki
2017 Unquestionable Optimism, Johannes Vogt, The Barn Show, East Hampton, New York
2017 Dream Machines, James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea, New York,
2017 New Scenario, HOPE, Altana Galerie, Dresden, newscenario.net
2017 Sharjah Biennial 13, Tamawuj, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
2017 Jon Rafman / Stan Vanderbeek, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles
2016 Under Arms. Fire & Forget 2, Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main
2016 Omul Negru, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles
2016 Summer Triangle, OCAT Shenzhen, China
2016 Public, Private, Secret, ICP Museum, New York
2016 Posthumous Lives, Mitchell Anderson - Jon Rafman, Maria Bernheim, Zurich, Switzerland Manifesta 11, Zurich
2016 Frieze NY with Seventeen Gallery, New York
2016 Wil Aballe Art Projects, Vancouver
2016 9th Berlin Biennale, Berlin
2016 Dreaming Mirrors, Dreaming Screens, Sprüth Magers, Berlin
