MoMA ANNOUNCES LIGHT: RAFAËL ROZENDAAL, AN IMMERSIVE DIGITAL ARTWORK

The Museum of Modern Art announces Light: Rafaël

Rozendaal, an immersive digital artwork, on view from November 16, 2024 through Spring 2025 on

the Hyundai Card Digital Wall in MoMA’s Agnes Gund Garden Lobby. This installation presents a

selection of Rozendaal’s vibrant animated works, each sampled for two to three minutes. Each work

originates as a storyboard sketched on paper , which is then translated into code of only a few

kilobytes (the exhibition’s total file size is 135 KB). The resulting final form is an autonomous website

organized by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator , Department of Architecture and Design, and Director ,

Research and Development, and Amanda Forment, Curatorial Assistant, Department of

Architecture and Design.

Rafaël Rozendaal (Dutch-Brazilian, born 1980) has been an innovator in the realm of Internet-based

art since the early 2000s. He produces captivating animations that explore the aesthetic and

conceptual possibilities of code, treating it as if it were paint. Rozendaal has historically planned his

websites to be robust enough to withstand the evolution of both software and hardware, and to be

equally vivid at any screen resolution. The artworks adapt fluidly to any display, from a smartphone

to the high-resolution LED screen in MoMA’s Agnes Gund Garden Lobby—which spans nearly 25 feet

across. The result is a state of immersion so complete that it seems to merge with the physical

world. Because Rozendaal has chosen the Internet as his canvas, his works exist within the

browser’s flat yet multidimensional digital landscape. For the same reason, these and all his works

are accessible to all online through their URLs, even though they are held in private and public

collections.

“I imagine we will live in a world where there is no diﬀerence between a screen and any other

surface,

” said Rozendaal.

“I always wanted to make work that could be seen by anyone, anywhere,

anytime. I wanted to create work that gives the viewer a feeling of possibility.

”

“Rafaël’s digital artworks are lean, accessible, indestructible. They bend and adapt and never break.

They are the ultimate example of the power that comes from lightness” says Paola Antonelli.

The Hyundai Card Digital Wall is a space for digital works and emerging technologies by

contemporary artists. Hyundai Card has partnered with MoMA since 2006 to connect more people

from around the world to the art of our time.