JOEY RAMONE is proud to host Net artist Jan Robert Leegte for his solo exhibition Mountains, Drop Shadows, Source Code and Stuff.
The preview is on Saturday April 13th, 5-8pm. The show runs till Saturday May 18th.
"Jan Robert Leegte is one of the Netherlands' first explorers of the Internet as a space and source for art production. He has a keen eye for the overlaps in the materiality of virtual and physical worlds, and some of his best works exist offline. With a gentle humorous touch Leegte creates poetic visual and sculptural comments on the mediated worlds that surround us. The work of Jan Robert Leegte exemplifies the way art continues and evolves in the digital age." - Josephine Bosma –
Mountains, Drop Shadows, Source Code and Stuff is Jan Robert Leegte's latest work to be presented in JOEY RAMONE. It is a small biotope of Net entities carefully sedated and transported to the gallery space. Here we may observe their common traits and differences, their cultures, physical qualities and formal appearances. It is here in the isolated context of the gallery, that we can wonder why they are, how they came to be, and what they have in store for us in the future. But it will be there where they will be transported back after the gallery period has ended, where they will awaken from their slumber, and once again become wild in their natural habitat, the Net.
Fascinated by the world behind the computer screen, Leegte explored the sculptural possibilities of the Internet as from 1997. In 2002 he shifted back to the gallery space, taking along his newly discovered favourite materials with him. Also he explored more "embedded" possibilities out of the gallery space in the endlessly deep contexts of the outside world; from urban postering in Alexandria to ornamenting ceilings in Brussels. Currently he has refocused on the net as medium. His work has been exhibited at a widespread selection of international shows and festivals.
Jan Robert Leegte (1973) studied Fine Arts at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam after having studied Architecture at the University of Delft. Since 2008 he teaches at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. He lives and works in Amsterdam.