Jan Robert Leegte - Introduction 2023

Jan Robert Leegte

JAN ROBERT LEEGTE

Jan Robert Leegte (born 1973, The Netherlands) is one of the first Dutch artists to work on and for the Internet since the 1990s. In 2002, he shifted his main focus to implementing digital materials in the context of the physical gallery space, aiming to bridge the online art world with the gallery art world, making prints, sculpture, installations, drawings, and projections, connecting to historical movements like land art, minimalism, performance art, and conceptualism.

As an artist Leegte explores the position of the new materials put forward by the (networked) computer. Photoshop selection marquees, scrollbars, Google Maps, code, and software are dissected to understand their ontological nature.

Leegte lives and works in Amsterdam. His work has been exhibited internationally, among other places, at Centre Pompidou (FR), Ludwig Museum (DE), Whitechapel Gallery (UK), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL) and ZKM Karlsruhe (DE).

Frames (2022)

Generatieve software / generative software

Edition of 1 + 1AP

No Content - Contemplations on Software (2023) Exhibition installation view at Upstream Gallery

Inside | Outside (2020)

Exhibition installation view at Upstream Gallery

Ornament (2021) at Art and the Blockchain Exhibition installation view

Repositions (2018) at Document Performance |

Permanence (2023)

Exhibition installation view at Panke Gallery

JPEG

Since the early 90s, compression has been the driving force behind the image-based internet. Without compression, there would be no Netscape, social media, NFTs, or AI-generated images. JPEG compression has specifically enabled photographybased imagery on the net. It has always served that purpose, and over time became the default for showing high-quality images online. Nevertheless, compression always leaves a trace, which has become the slightly distorted lens through which the network sees the world of uploaded images.

The works from the JPEG series try to create an image programmatically fully expressing that signature compression. An image that is made from barely nothing, yet fully present in its blazing appearance. A work deeply material, expressing itself through the language of code and codec transferred to a plate of aluminum. This is not a JPEG depicting an image. The JPEG is the image itself.

Where abstract expressionists cut out the depiction in painting, attempting to make the artist convey pure emotion, JPEG cuts out the artist’s emotion and lets it emerge from within the algorithm.

Works from the JPEG series are sold as NFT’s and Chromolux prints.

JPEG (0x1d64fdccd29819afeb78ad8a19beb25bf27d00a4aab1a7f38fe7297c44326e43), (2023)

ChromaLuxe print in aluminium frame 80 x 80 cm

JPEG (0x87f6237334bccea40e82db3df8d6ecca1780be366d41e237aa50ed223f20af00), (2023)

ChromaLuxe print in aluminium frame

150 x 100 cm

Unique piece

BROKEN IMAGES

The most infamous broken link is the 404 error. The error stands for “file not found”. An example is an image on a webpage that refers to an address that is non-existent. When this happens, the browser shows a beveled outline of the missing image with an icon of a broken image in the top left corner.

The vast majority of NFTs are minted links to images stored elsewhere on servers. In the NFT collection Broken Images, the absence of that image is shown by minting broken links. Using the broken image as the visual element, the work is produced as small web pages that contain compositions of broken images and are hosted on-chain on the Ethereum blockchain. The webpages are responsive and will shape-shift both according to the operating system and browser that you choose and transform in the future to reflect the underlying technology.

Broken Images No. 25, (2023)

Handmade on-chain responsive HTML NFTs

DImensions variable

Edition of 27

Broken Images No. 29, (2023)

handmade on-chain responsive HTML NFTs

Dimensions variable

Edition of 27

SCROLLBARS

A scrollbar is an interface to a content space. A set space that can be moved around for us to explore it. With the scrollbar decoupled from its original purpose, it points to nothing, becoming a broken link. It becomes a sculptural entity with an empty space as an appendix. Leaving behind the memory of decades of internet culture.

373

266

244 cm

Edition of 1 + 1 AP

Scrollbar Composition, (2017)

Wooden construction, computer projection

x

x

Scrollbar Composition, (2022) Installation view at Kunsthalle Zürich

No Content - Contemplations on Software (2023) Exhibition installation view at Upstream Gallery

COMPRESSED LANDSCAPES

For Compressed Landscapes Leegte drew inspiration from the methods of 19th-century artists such as Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries. With this series, Leegte attempts to breathe new life into 19thcentury artists’ plein air painting: where the latter went outdoors to paint landscapes using brushes, Leegte applies algorithms to the wilderness of the Internet. These algorithms visit online photo databases such as Flickr, and randomly select images on the basis of search terms such as ‘mountains’, ‘forests’ or ‘sunset’. Once such images have been found, the algorithm compresses them into tiny files. The result of this computer process are digital impressionistic landscapes.

As the algorithm is constantly searching for images, the result is five ever-changing and therefore always unique Internet artworks of forests, sunsets, mountain sceneries, lunar skies and general landscapes.

Compressed Landscapes (2016)

HTML, Javascript, CSS, flickr API website

REPOSITIONS

The Repositions works are investigations into the fundamental performative nature of software. Instead of taking the web document as a page to display static content; text, images, gifs, video, etc. the works have the document itself perform and can be read as document performances. Referencing to Bruce Nauman’s canonical “Wall-Floor Positions” from 1968, the works have the document take new positions in relation to the viewer and the browser’s window frame. Using random algorithms, the documents are infinitely striking new poses. The works have been executed in a series including a blank, blue, black and silver document.

Repositions (White) (2018) at Document Performance |

Permanence (2023)

Exhibition installation view at Panke Gallery

FRAMES

The Triton Collection Foundation has asked the two contemporary artists Harm van den Dorpel (1981) and Jan Robert Leegte (1973), to each reflect on the recently discovered painting “Les fumées sur les toits” by Fernand Léger (1881-1955) with a new digital artwork.

“Frames” by Jan Robert Leegte is a generative computer work. In a fixed time interval, a live computergenerated composition of frames and colour areas emerges. Each composition is unique and will never recur, for as long as the work will keep running. The work refers to Léger’s series Fumées sur les toits showing views of city rooftops. Emptiness translates this into an aesthetic of the 1990s. Using the trompel’oeil technique, he creates a physical illusion on screen. Shadows and light suggest form. At a subtle pace, fields of colour emerge within the composition, rising and dissipating like the mists above the structures of the city, seen through the window of the computer screen.

Frames (2022)

Generatieve software / generative software

Edition of 1 + 1AP

ORNAMENT

Jan Robert Leegte. Being among the first artists who were involved in the 90s net art movement, Leegte was challenged from the perspective of a sculptor by the new materiality that was provided by the Internet. By the continual and random alternation of black and white lines, his Ornament series displays an ever changing illusion of three-dimensionality, of light and shadow, and of sculptural materiality.

Each individual ornament exists both on-chain as a fized size SVG and off-chain as a web-based version that can be altered in its dimensions. What is special about Ornament is that both of these are created deterministically based on the token hash of your NFT, which makes them identical. For the onchain SVG, we rendered a 800 x 800 px image which looks best in OpenSea, etc. On a dedicated webpage (https://ornament.leegte.org/ornament?o=tokenid) you will be able to re-render your Ornament in any dimension you like, to use as desktop image, mobile phone background, a print at home, show on a screen on your wall, whatever you want. The url for your ornament will also be in the metadata or your NFT and can be found on OpenSea. In spite of all the variations you make, it will still remain the same ornament. Different, yet familiar.

Ornament (2021)

NFT, dimensions variable

MOUNTAINS AND DROP SHADOWS

Mountains are grand natural statements of sculptural expression. They are birthplaces of monumentality and romanticism. Their crumbs are the raw materials that provided us with a long tradition of sculpture. Then there is the ambiguous materiality of the digital, the man-made bits and bytes, flowing through systems, from which designed materials have emerged. Among them is the ‘drop shadow’, a material bereft of all our notions of materiality, it being nothing but the absence of light cast upon a surface due to an obstructing object. Being objectless, asides it being a digital simulacrum, places it in opposition to the mountain.

The images of the mountains used for this series of works are anonymous wallpapers, backgrounds for computer desktops, found on the web. It is in this desacralized digital condition that the drop shadow seems to overtake the mountain in sculptural authority. The individual works exist as unique prints based on the size of the web image, face mounted on acrylic, mounted on dibond. The series is based on the Internet work Mountains and Drop Shadows (2013), available through www.mountainsanddropshadows.com.

Mountains and Drop Shadow, (2017)

Archival inject on dibond front mounted on acrylic 100 x 163 cm