In 1987 John Knoll took a picture of his wife Jennifer on holiday. He didn’t keep this beautiful, private snapshot to himself. No, he used it as the demonstration image in his pioneering photo software. That familiar image of Jennifer sat topless in the surf of a tropical beach has now been twisted and manipulated by countless users as they learned the ropes of Photoshop.
And it’s all over this show of young Dutch artist Constant Dullaart’s work. First in 12 framed images that shift as you walk past them (each alternating between the original view and a heavily Photoshop-filtered version) and then as warped, swirling wallpaper throughout the gallery. On the wall there are emails from Dullaart to Jennifer herself, asking how she feels about that photo. By turning the digital into the physical and adding narrative background to this image, Dullaart has helped humanise it. He’s taken it away from the Photoshoppers and given it back some of its original life.
A series of Dullaart’s own childhood holiday snaps follow, each signed by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. A screen in the next room shows the Google home page, with the search bar turned into a mouth, endlessly and loudly reciting Google’s terms of service. Everywhere you look, Dullaart has added glass screens. They mimic the computer screens we stare at all day, but also keep you at a physical distance.
Downstairs, the walls of a final room are lined with flags, a single plinth inscribed with www.thecensoredinternet.com at its centre. It’s too obvious but it’s the only misstep in an otherwise brilliant show. It’s brilliant because Dullaart deals in the friction between real life and the internet, freedom and censorship, security and ownership and makes you uncomfortable in the process. If art can do all of that while still looking good, it’s doing something right.
Eddy Frankel