faro WORKPLACE

My day starts with drawing. Every day I draw lines and I try to not think.
I try to not think in words or images or intentions. I try to let my hand think.
These drawings become files. I go to my computer and look at my sketchbook and decide which one of these lines on paper would become an interesting composition on the screen.
I am steadily working on a library of ideas. Most do not yet have a home.
Over time, different opportunities come up and it is important for me that my ideas were formed before a question was asked. When the question comes I can fit a work like fitting the last piece of a puzzle.
Rafaël Rozendaal

commissioned by faro Nakameguro
cooperated by Takuro Someya Contemporary Art
Supported by Benjamin Moore Japan

Into Time is a series of lenticular paintings that departs from the traditional concept of painting in that they cannot be experienced instantaneously but must be seen over a duration of time. Some of the works in this series are based on the geometric patterns and color gradations generated through Rozendaal’s website works, intotime.us, intotime.com, and intotime.org.

Rozendaal’s lenticular paintings contain time within them, and as such, it is only by moving our bodies around these works that we can experience them in their entirety. The surface of a lenticular painting functions similarly to that of a screen such as an RGB monitor or an image cast by a projector. But whereas monitors and projectors are media that display images standing in for physical “landscapes” as they change to and fro, the nature of the lenticular medium is such that it becomes the shifting image itself. And just as an actual landscape contains an infinity of views that depend on the position of the viewer, so too does the lenticular. The new lenticular paintings presented in Screen Time reflect the ongoing development of Rozendaal’s sense of colors and their combinations.

(solo exhibition “Screen Time” 2026 TSCA)

Abstract Browsing tapestries, is a series of paintings that abstractly reimagine the screen composition of web pages, and is based on the browser plugin Abstract Browsing developed by Rozendaal in 2014. This free software, which is also available for Google Chrome, serves to invert the information (image, placement, text) on the web page into a geometric arrangement of bright colors. Rozendaal used this program to produce over 1000 images from well-known service websites, and from them deliberately selected compositions that “did not require beauty” to transform into paintings.
Also,　he traces back to the origins of weaving machines and computers. By depicting the progression towards digitalization diachronically through the actual interweaving of the warp and weft threads, he conveys to us that what is created from computer art is not always projected upon a screen.

(solo exhibition “Convenient” 2017 TSCA)

“Extra Nervous,” is made of colored plexiglass that has been laser cut by a computer. The mirrored surface of the plexiglass reflects the image of viewers standing in front of the works.
There are the motifs, colorful and simplified abstractions that evoke familiar objects such as tables, elevators, and windows.
These images of interior spaces may hold new meaning for many of us after the COVID-19 of heightened anxiety, spent looking out at the world from inside of our homes.
(solo exhibition “calm” 2021 TSCA)

The lenticulars here are similar to his installations which use mirrors and projectors, as both are able to dynamically reflect light. It may be said that Rozendaal’s characteristic motives – specific colors, the contrast of light and dark, various patterns, movements and types of interaction – which he was once able to draw only on light-emitting displays, have taken a step further towards material painting. However, the illusion formed by light reflecting off the surface of a lenticular is different than the illusion seen in trompe l’oeil or op art since it does not rely on the limit of human eyesight. It is rather the medium – the lenticular sheet itself – that which has the property of freeing the colors dwelling in the rays of light, making them visible to the human eye.
The lenticular paintings leave us unable to catch the true essence of the image which changes depending on the viewer’s perspective. At the same time, due to their changing quality, these images always keep their freshness, and it can be said that they reflect the outward scenery which keeps changing at an accelerating pace. Rozendaal’s works – in which there is no attachment towards things that have shape, but rather show complete freedom and playfulness – seem to inspire hope for that what we call “painting.”

(solo exhibition “Somewhere” 2016 TSCA)

Shadow Objects as a collective artwork, one can see that the shading cutout through precise computation and equipment present themselves as composed presences that seemingly embody the laws of nature—as though even the light and shadow have been conceived according to a program. As can be surmised from the title that seemingly references Donald Judd’s Specific Objects, the horizons of ‘hard conceptual’ fostered within American art is perhaps beginning to expand once more as a new “feeling” of the contemporary age.

（solo exhibition “Convenient” 2017 TSCA)

BT Interview（2023.12.21)　(Japanese Only)