Artists Answer: How has the internet affected the way you look at art?

We've invited former Featured Artists to answer a series of questions about being an artist and to highlight a new work made since the time of their interviews. Some questions are practical; some are philosophical. These compilations will be interspersed with new Featured Artist interviews every month and will include links back to older interviews. And don't forget to sign up for the monthly blog digest if you prefer to get all your Featured Artist action in your inbox once a month.

Dan Solberg | Read the Interview

Reports & Letters (installation view), 2015. 2-channel audio, speakers, MP3 player.
Sound installation with audio alternating between left and right channels. Watch Excerpt

The internet has made me very image-conscious when it comes to art. For my own work, one of my top priorities is documentation and web presence. Gallery shows are temporary, but my work can exist online 24/7, so, in a sense, I need to be my own digital exhibition coordinator. I love being able to do quick research on an artist that's new to me, amassing a near-instant knowledge of the sort of work that they do. Of course, with being image-conscious, I've also become more of a skeptic of the authenticity of images online, but rather than decrying the practice, I elect to make self-reflective work about and within that ambiguous space.

Abdul Abdullah | Read the Interview

Everything is fine, 2016. Oil and resin on canvas. 100cm x 100cm.

I grew up in Perth in Western Australia. It is a city of 1.5 million and is the most geographically isolated city on the planet. Without the internet I probably wouldn’t be an artist at all. The internet gives me access to work being produced right now all over the world.

Cristi Ranklin | Read the Interview

MTR, 2016. Oil and acrylic on aluminum. 48" x 72."

I'll preface all this by saying that nothing replaces actual seeing. While I still prioritize seeing art in person whenever possible, I have found the internet to be a revolutionary tool in accessing and sharing images of art. With the rise of social media as a means to share works in any stage with an audience, the network of exchange has expanded beyond anything available to artists of even the recent past. I am both a practicing artist and an educator, so I am constantly looking for new work to share with my students, and if you know where to look, there are some sophisticated tools available to do exploratory searches for art that can lead you to unexpected places. I've used sites like Artsy, a curated site which maps visual relationships among images, so if you start with a general category, you may end up with several artists who are new to you. Using the internet's hyperlink features, you can go down a wormhole of discovery by simply entering an artist's name into Google and clicking on everything that comes up and seeing where it leads you. And as far as quality goes, seeing work on a portable illuminated screen is far superior to holding up a sheet of slides or flipping through photo reproductions. Most everyone has something in their pocket that can provide an instant slideshow to any onlooker. So in conclusion, I would say that with the combination of the internet and the portable device, artists have an incredible tool for showing and looking at art.

Eric Valosin | Read the Interview


Hyalo 3 (WaveParticle), 2016. Acrylic Paint and Digital Projection Installation. 50" x 84"

I’ve become very interested in the way the internet augments our notion of space and superimposes another layer of mediated meaning on artwork. To view work online is not the same experience as viewing it in person, and thus the work takes on new meaning as a result of accruing this new medium. There’s the old trope of going to the Louvre to experience the crowd of people staring intently at cameras aimed at the Mona Lisa.


In my own work, I’m interested in how this extends to the contemplative practices of viewing meditative imagery. What does it mean metaphysically to study a mandala online, or pinch to zoom a sacred icon or artifact? Where does our spirit go when our minds enter cyberspace? How does our body aid in our mystical experiences as we park it at the entrance way to a URL? I say this with a bit of tongue in cheek, recognizing the separation of the mind/body/spirit is perhaps a false distinction to begin with.

With online galleries, call for entry forms and the like, we’ve gotten quite facile with the internet as a tool, but I don’t think we’ve fully figured out what it means, in an ontological sense, when the vast majority of art exists as pixels to the average viewer.


Cable Griffith | Read the Interview

Plein@ir 1.3 (Halle Ravine), 2016. Acrylic and oil on canvas. 30 x 48 inches (diptych).

I think that one way the internet has affected the way we look at art is by shifting an overwhelming emphasis onto the image, as opposed to the object. We’ve grown so accustomed to pretending we’ve had an experience with a work by viewing an image of it on screen. And at the same time, I’m grateful to have access to so many images of so much work by so many artists! But we devour these images faster and faster. As a painter, I want people to stand in front of the object and take their time. The sense of scale, from the edge of the canvas to a single brush stroke, is intentional and actual. It’s disappointing to think that people think they’ve “seen” this piece or that piece by simply scrolling through a barrage of images on a phone or laptop. David Hockney said something like "Video brings its time to you, but you have to bring your time to painting."

Mark Zawatski | Read the Interview

Interference 6, 2015. Archival Pigment Print. 16 x 16 Inches (24 x 24 Inches Framed).

The internet gives me a daily diet of art and allows me to see work that I would never be able to see in person. Some people disparage viewing images online and insist that you can only judge work by seeing it in person. Sure there are experiential qualities that can only be gleaned in person, but people have been studying and writing about art and art history from slides or photographs for well over a century. It’s a false dichotomy to insist that viewing and evaluating images online is somehow inferior.