His quasi-anthropological works—often incorporating internet-sourced images and narrative material—investigate digital technologies and the communities they create, focusing on the losses, longings and fantasies that shape our technology-infused lives today. The Montreal-based artist turns an empathic but critical eye on the internet age, investigating experiences of alienation, nostalgia, loneliness and grief. The Nine Eyes of Google Street View —present , an ever-growing collection of photographic images and frequently updated website, finds him rummaging the panoramic street view feature of Google Maps for unusual images.
While the bust-like objects of his series New Age Demanded —present evoke classical modernist sculptures, they were actually created using digital imaging techniques and technologies including 3D printing or 3D model-based carving.
A series of large-scale photographs titled You Are Standing in an Open Field juxtaposes grimy computer keyboards and trash-heaped desks with pastoral landscape painting backgrounds. Examples include his Dream Journal — , for which Rafman documents his daily dreams before mixing them with found narratives from mythology, video games and TV series.
Although available online, they are most effectively experienced in specially-designed sculptural installations. These emphatically physical installations squeeze viewers into booths, transport them to the bedroom of a typical North American teenager, invite them to lie on polyurethane foam seating or in pools of plastic balls.
They ask what it means to live in a time when technologies structure our every waking hour, or when the price of easy fulfillment of our needs is loneliness in front of a computer screen. They explore the ever-present experience of living in a world where nothing is permanent, but nothing is forgotten. Jon Rafman Disasters under the Sun , Single-channel video, color, sound min.
