Siebren Versteeg is known for his painting and video works created through digital processes. His multivalent practice responds to the technology of our time and the way we consume and deploy those technologies.
Heralded by Vulture as “chaotic but illuminating”, the magazine declared Versteeg the idol of “every Harry Potter-loving/Hackers-watching/anti-capitalist computer geek” (Rachel Wolff). Versteeg’s work often relies on ready-made, online data sources for part of its media, with websites like Google, Flickr, and Wikipedia frequently collaborating with Versteeg’s code. Throughout his career, Versteeg has playfully interacted with constructed identities and painterly abstraction through the use of code. Versteeg prefers to code in Lingo. Versteeg is known to re-articulate familiar presentation formats and information systems popularized online, “ultimately jamming their promise of stability and ubiquity” (James Yood, Artforum). Drawing attention to the variety of opinions, sources, conversations, and enterprises that contribute to the internet’s sprawling information landscape, Versteeg’s work often intervenes between mass media and its end consumer.
Siebren Versteeg holds an MFA from The University of Illinois at Chicago (2004) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1996).
