Rafaël Rozendaal is one of the world’s best-known players in digital art.

81 Horizons was first published as a series on the NFT platform Opensea in 2021 and is based on the artist’s credo of abstraction through reduction. He speaks of the “beauty of code.”

Through skillful programming, his sketches and instructions result in extremely small and condensed files that are permanently inscribed in the blockchain in the form of smart contracts.

All 81 works depicted together reach a total volume of no more than 10 KB, which is roughly the data size of an average standard email.

Throughout the project, technical, aesthetic, and even social issues continually interpenetrate. Each of the digital works stands for itself and has its own owner. At the same time, 81 Horizons defines itself as the sum of all variants.

English and German text.

Published on occasion of the exhibition ‘Rafaël Rozendaal: Color, Code, Communication’, 21 Apr – 20 Aug 2023, Museum Folkwang, Essen.

Rafaël Rozendaal was born in Amsterdam in 1980. He lives and works in New York.