Siebren Versteeg: In Advance of Another Thing

Siebren Versteeg (American, b. 1971) uses online mass media and commercial databases to investigate our media-saturated world in which the real and the virtual have become intertwined. Versteeg’s works employ computer programs that automatically connect to the Internet, browse different types of images, and bring them to monitors in a gallery space. This infinite flow of images, which creates a loose narrative, is a pseudo-random selection: the computer program chooses the images, but according to the artist’s instructions. This automatic process recalls everyday internet browsing and sometimes brings strange results. Some of Versteeg’s works are inspired by seminal art works that commented on social and political issues of their own time, such as Jasper Johns’s Flag series of paintings dating from the late 1950s and Vito Acconci’s video The Red Tapes (1976). The exhibition includes Versteeg’s Boom (Fresher Acconci), 2007, recently acquired for the Museum’s collection.