Walter Van Rijn

How Can You And I Ever Be Free In the 21st C? My work explores the natural and digital networked world and its many contradictions. From big data to detail, from complex bodies to singular objects, entities move through both these worlds and are transformed and hybridised by it. I am transfixed by this constant movement, while deep down nothing changes. I try to be mindful of people and things shaping each other at the same time, and I create multiple layered, interconnected things that seek out the boundaries of our thinking about this or that. How Can You And I Ever Be Free In the 21st C?, is a question I keep on asking, considering the time we live in. And what do freedom and truth mean today, thinking about the current political situation where human rights and the environment are completely sidelined. Extrajudicial executions and the 6th mass extinction event, for example, don't seem to translate into political change. I create work that combines art and design, hybrids of image and text in digital and analogue form. The artworks can take any shape and have an unusual and speculative way of distribution and communication. Recently, I use meta-data as my material and create work in the form of typefaces, fictive collections and algorithmic text-based work. A cross-media practice which is dispersed alongside exhibited multi-media installations through printed matter, performances, public art, and websites. I am born in the Netherlands and live and work in the UK. https://waltervanrijn.wordpress.com London - Guildford