Founded in 2012, "First Look" is an online exhibition platform co-presented by Rhizome and the New Museum (our longtime affiliate). "First Look" projects have taken wildly different forms—from instagram accounts to livestream performance to executable programs.
We wanted to take a moment to highlight a few of these exhibitions for your viewing pleasure. In these times, when life is suddenly a whole lot more online and the importance of our virtual networks so pronounced, it’s also nice to have some sick stuff to scope.
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Guided Meditation, Tough Guy Mountain, 2019. Courtesy the artist. Coming to Artist's VR soon.
Artist’s VR is an ongoing exhibition platform within the First Look platform housing commissioned virtual reality works. The platform was launched with a group exhibition featuring Jayson Musson, Rachel Rossin, Jacolby Satterwhite, Jon Rafman, Peter Burr with Porpentine Charity Heartscape, and Jeremy Couillard. Since the initial exhibition, we have uploaded work from artist Rindon Johnson. Next week, we'll launch Tough Guy Mountain's Guided Meditation. Download the app for iOS or Android.
remote intimacies: Not-Delivered(!).jpg, shawné michaelain holloway, 2014. Courtesy the artist.
Real Live Online is an exhibition curated by Lucas G. Pinheiro and Devin Kenny (recent Rhizome benefit honoree), focusing on online performance using web platforms. From the curators: “The exhibition considers performance as an expansive category that includes many aspects of everyday internet usage, from live-streaming gameplay to online relationships.”
Rindon Johnson, 'Away with You,' 2016 still from VR video
New Black Portraitures, organized by Rhizome Editor and Curator (then Assistant Curator) Aria Dean, is an online group exhibition that explores tensions between visibility, concealment, and self-representation after the internet. The exhibition features video, VR, photography, and social media performances. Additionally, Rhizome commissioned a durational performance, Banana Island, by artist and musician N-Prolenta.
“Masterpiece,” 11/16/18, 4:04 PM (Eastern Standard Time). Image Atlas, 2012. Website view, dimensions variable. View an archive of this search.
Image Atlas (2012), commissioned by Lauren Cornell, is a collaboration between Taryn Simon and the late activist and engineer Aaron Swartz that emerged from their pairing up for 7x7 2012. Image Atlas is a search engine that indexes top image results for a given term across geographically localized search engines. The project gives a bird's eye view of the texture of the web, the cultural differences across borders and regions and so on.
And finally, though not technically a First Look exhibition, I urge everyone to explore Net Art Anthology, our major exhibition and archival project that tells the story of net art from 1984 to 2016 through 100 seminal works.