Jan Robert Leegte

Jan Robert Leegte (1973) is a Dutch artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. He is one of the first Dutch artists who makes art on and for the internet since the nineties.[1] Nowadays, he makes art both on the internet, in the form of websites as in offline media, like prints, sculptures and projections. A recurring theme in his work is the sculptural materiality of interfaces and computer programs, like the graphic design of cursors, menu and scroll bars.[2]

Jan Robert Leegte, 2017

Biography

Jan Robert Leegte first studied architecture at the Technical University of Delft, before he switched to the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam where he studied fine arts and interaction design.

Since 1997, Leegte makes art in the form of websites, that he connects to arthistorical movements like minimalism, land art and conceptualism. An example is the recreation of the iconic work 'Spiral Jetty' (1970) by the American artist Robert Smithson, that Leegte rebuilt in the platformgame Minecraft to explore the online possibilities of Land Art.[3][4] Since 2002 he translates his online work to offline materials. In his sculptures and projections he gives a materiality to online phenomena, like scrollbars and selection boxes.

Leegte teaches at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in The Hague and Artez in Arnhem.

Exhibitions (selection)

Recent exhibitions:

  • 'Sculpting the Internet', solo exhibition at Upstream Gallery (2017)
  • 'On Digital Materiality', online solo exhibition at Carroll / Fletcher (2016)
  • ‘Electronic Superhighway’, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016)
  • 'Shifting Optics III', Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam (2016)
  • 'Gym of Obsolete Technology', W139, Amsterdam (2016)
  • 'Expeditie Land Art', Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort (2015)
  • 'Sublime Landscapes in Gaming', Rijksmuseum Twente, Enschede (2015)
  • 'Born Digital', Museum of the Image, Breda (2014)

Notes
  1. Vos, Lisa, "HTML is mijn steen en beitel", NRC Handelsblad, 8 September 2016 ""
  2. Karthaus, Jade, "Born Digital", Metropolis M, 22 januari 2015 ""
  3. Cousijn, Marian, "Negen kunstwerken over de natuur die je gezien moet hebben, gewoon op je laptop", De Correspondent ""
  4. "Land Art in The Netherlands", Metropolis M ["http://www.metropolism.com/en/features/23431_land_art_in_the_netherlands]"
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