The work of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer focuses on surveillance, deception, and perception in contemporary society. Within his practice the artist reconfigures the discourse around technology’s connection to individuals and communities. Created in 1992, Surface Tension is Lozano-Hemmer’s first interactive artwork. The installation of this piece at The Armory Show marks a historic moment within the artist’s oeuvre, underscoring the importance of commentary on the increased role of surveillance in everyday life. Surface Tension features a giant human eye that follows each observer with Orwellian precision. The artist was inspired by a reading of Georges Bataille’s 1932 text The Solar Anus during the first Gulf War when camera-guided intelligent bombs were first widely deployed. Present-day computerized surveillance techniques employed by the Department of Homeland Security in the United States through the Patriot Act provide an increasingly distressing backdrop for this work.

bitforms gallery is pleased to present this installation on an immersive large-scale 4K display. Lozano-Hemmer was the first artist to represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale with an exhibition at Palazzo Van Axel in 2007. In the past two years, the artist was the subject of nine solo exhibitions worldwide, including a major show at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, the inaugural show at the AmorePacific Museum in Seoul, and a mid-career retrospective co-produced by the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal and SFMOMA. In 2019 his immersive performance “Atmospheric Memory” premiered at the Manchester International Festival and his interactive installation “Border Tuner” connected people across the US-Mexico border using bridges of light controlled by the voices of participants in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and El Paso, Texas.

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Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
b. 1967, Mexico City, Mexico
Lives and works in Montréal

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is known for creating large-scale interactive installations in public spaces throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. Using robotics, custom software, projections, internet links, cell phones, sensors, LEDs, cameras, tracking systems, and often employing vanguard technologies, his “Antimonuments” challenge traditional notions of site-specificity, and instead focus on the idea of creating relationship-specific work through connective interfaces. His smaller-scale “Subsculptures” and his work in photography, video, and installation explore themes of surveillance, perception, and deception. Since his emergence in the 1990s, Lozano-Hemmer has mixed the disparate fields of digital media, robotics, medical science, performance art, and lived experience into interactive artworks.

His public artworks have been commissioned for the pre-opening exhibition of the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi (2015); the activation of the Raurica Roman Theatre in Basel (2018); the Philadelphia Association for Public Art (2012); La Triennale québécoise, Montreal, Canada (2011); Winter Olympics, Vancouver, Canada (2010); Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia (2010); the 50th Anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2009); the memorial for the Tlatelolco Student Massacre, Mexico City (2008); Madison Square Park, New York (2008); Trafalgar Square, London (2008); Québec City’s 400th Anniversary (2008); the Expansion of the European Union, Dublin, Ireland (2004); the opening of the YCAM Center, Yamaguchi, Japan (2003); and the Millennium Celebrations, Mexico City (1999).

He has received two BAFTA British Academy Awards for Interactive Art in London, a Golden Nica at the Prix Ars Electronica in Austria, “Artist of the year” Rave Award from Wired Magazine, a Rockefeller fellowship, the Trophée des Lumières in Lyon, an International Bauhaus Award in Dessau, the title of Compagnon des Arts et des Lettres du Québec in Quebec, and the Governor General’s Award in Canada. He has lectured at Goldsmiths College, the Bartlett School, Princeton, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Cooper Union, USC, MIT MediaLab, Guggenheim Museum, LA MOCA, Netherlands Architecture Institute, Cornell, UPenn, SCAD, Danish Architecture Center, CCA in Montreal, ICA in London, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

In the past two years, Lozano-Hemmer was the subject of 9 solo exhibitions worldwide, including a major show at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, the inaugural show at the AmorePacific Museum in Seoul, and a mid-career retrospective co-produced by the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal and SFMOMA. In 2019 his immersive performance “Atmospheric Memory” premiered at the Manchester International Festival and his interactive installation “Border Tuner” connected people across the US-Mexico border using bridges of light controlled by the voices of participants in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and El Paso, Texas.