Jon Rafman

Jon Rafman is a Montreal artist who explores technology’s place within contemporary life through video, photography, sculpture and installation. He draws his inspiration from the Internet and video game culture, as well as modernism and the alienating effects of some of the more obscure subcultures found within the Deep Web.

Rafman investigates the ambiguous navigation between the real world and the virtual world, between celebrating and critiquing technology. To do so, he uses archetypal figures, such as the flâneur or the ethnographer, as alter egos that enable him to explore the fragmentation of identity our world is currently witnessing. Rafman uses archival methods and accumulation to reflect on the nature of memory, and his videos are often presented in projection booths or with specifically designed furniture elements. This interest in presentation devices heightens our immersion into his singular universe, while inviting us to observe, from a critical standpoint, our fabrication of reality. Jon Rafman began exhibiting in 2010, and his work has since been shown extensively around the world.