Welcome to One Positive Present, the place Observer highlights a lately opened exhibition at a museum not in New York Metropolis, a spot we all know and love that already receives loads of consideration.
The genius composer Daniel Lopatin, a.okay.a. Oneohtrix Level By no means, is thought for his collaborations with visible artists. The primary time I noticed him play dwell was on the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in a multimedia efficiency that paired him with frequent collaborator Nate Boyce. I’ve seen him a number of occasions since then, memorably at Greenpoint’s Warsaw in 2016, the place Jon Rafman (b. 1981) did the visuals. The music was incredible, and my appreciation of its glitch qualities was deepened by the enormous picture of a Reddit-style man that saved showing onstage, his face masked by panties as he factors two weapons at his personal head.
Rafman drinks deep from web tradition in methods that aren’t all the time mainstream-friendly. I noticed a chunk of social sculpture he staged at Zach Feuer Gallery that was indistinguishable from an precise Road Fighter IV match. Now, the forward-thinking Louisiana Museum of Fashionable Artwork has simply opened “Jon Rafman: Report a Concern – The 9 Eyes Archives,” which collects works associated to The 9 Eyes of Google Road View, a challenge he started in 2008.
The challenge sounds easy, for it consists of Rafman combing and cataloging moments captured on Google Road View, however the artist has managed to seek out astounding moments of irony, violence and wonder—qualities all deepened by their fleeting nature as they have been captured by likelihood on an orb-shaped digital camera under no circumstances designed to report humanity.
The core of the exhibition is these pictures, offered in a 60-meter set up of 1000’s of small prints or displayed in a supercut video. Rafman’s curation is astounding. It’s as if he is among the angels in Wings of Need (1988), silently watching the varied follies of man. There are furries, automobile accidents and other people handed out drunk. There may be tragic brand-new structure that was purported to look futuristic. There may be a lot prostitution. There may be mooning.
It’s all so good that it virtually stands as a riposte to different up to date artwork. Is anybody going to make a sculpture nearly as good because the inflatable taters exterior Austin’s Sofa Potatoes Furnishings & Mattress, Residence of the World’s Largest Couch?
Rafman unpacks lots of his concepts, too, as in You, the World and I (2010), which tells the story of a person who by no means had any images of an ex-girlfriend and now stalks her addresses on Road View to seek out pictures of her. Even the title of the challenge affords commentary. “9 Eyes” refers not solely to the variety of cameras on the automobiles that gather such images, however a SIGINT sharing association—the 9 Eyes alliance—between sure nations. Within the catalogue, Rafman reminds us that again when this challenge began, Google’s motto was “Don’t be Evil.” They’ve since modified it.
“Jon Rafman: Report a Concern – The 9 Eyes Archives” is on view on the Louisiana Museum of Fashionable Artwork via January 11, 2026.
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