Opening Jon Rafman

This Stedelijk Friday Night you can lose yourself in the far-flung corners of the web in the world of avatars, online subcultures and fetish communities.

Canadian artist Jon Rafman (1981) explores the social effects of digital media in his video films and installations. The artist is fascinated by how the boundless possibilities of the Internet and virtual platforms affect and redefine our behavior, social life, and even personal identity. In his work he oscillates between wit, melancholy and alienation. Rafman is regarded as one of the leading artists of the digital age. 

PROGRAM

6.15 – 6.30 pm: Welcome by Director Beatrix Ruf & curator Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen
6.30 – 7.15 pm: Preview exhibition 
7.15 – 7.45 pm: Column by Josephine Bosma (journalist and critic) + interview Jon Rafman by curator Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen 
7.45 - 10 pm: Drinks & music, museum will be open until 10pm

More information about the exhibition Jon Rafman.

MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Beatrix Ruf is director of the Stedelijk Museum. Under her directorship the museum began in January 2016 Stedelijk Contemporary: dynamic solo exhibitions by a young generation of artists with a.o. Cally Spooner, Saskia Noor van Imhoff, Bernadette Corporation and now; Jon Rafman

Josephine Bosma is a journalist and critic living and working in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She focuses on art in the context of the internet. Bosma is one of only a few critics in the Netherlands that have followed art in the context of the internet from the early nineties till the post-internet practices of today. In 2011 her book Nettitudes - Let's Talk Net Art appeared, which lead to an external PhD candidacy at the University of Amsterdam.  Some recent texts and interviews by Bosma have been Post-Digital is Post-Screen in Post-Digital Research (2014) and Missing Links in Frieze D/E (2014). In 2015, Josephine Bosma was part of the jury for the Prix Net Art, a co-production of Rhizome in New York and Chronus Art Center and Tsinghua Art and Science Media Laboratory in Beijing.

Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen is curator at the Stedelijk Museum sinds 1995 and curator of the exhibition Jon Rafman: Jon Rafman: I have ten thousand compound eyes and each is named suffering. In the renovated Stedelijk he curated many exhibitions, most recently: Isa Genzken Mach Dich hübsch!, A Year At The Stedelijk: Tino Sehgal, Ed Atkins – Recent Ouija and Lawrence Weiner – Written On The Wind, among others. From 1999-2006, Van Nieuwenhuyzen was the chief curator of the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (SMBA), a project space of the museum in the center of Amsterdam. From 2000 to 2003, he was associate director of exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, where he was responsible for the exhibition program with a team of three international directors. In 2005, he was the curator of the Dutch Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale.