bitforms gallery

b. 1971, New Haven, CT
Lives and works in New York

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). Solo exhibitions of his work have been mounted at University of  Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; Museum of Art at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; Hallwalls, Buffalo,  NY; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Michael Jon and Alan, Miami,  FL; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL; and Max Protetch, New York, NY. His work has been included in group exhibitions  at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC;  Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD; Krannert Art Museum, Urbana-Champaign, IL; The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA; National Museum of Art, Prague, Czech  Republic; James Cohan Gallery, New York, NY, and Clifton Benevento, New York, NY. Versteeg has received a MacDowell  Fellowship (2016), Illinois Arts Council Fellowship (2005), The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Merit Fellowship  (2004), and Stone Fellowship for Graduate Study from The University of Illinois at Chicago (2002), and was a Kennedy  Visiting Artist in Residence at the University of South Florida, Tampa (2009). Prominent collections featuring his work include  the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Yale  University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL;  and Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI. Versteeg lives and works in Queens, NY.

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