🫴Artists You Need to Know: Rafaël Rozendaal
Since the 2000s, Rafaël Rozendaal has expanded the possibilities of digital art. Starting with single-serving websites, his work now spans global exhibitions. With Rooms launching soon at Fellowship, here’s a look at his journey↓
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A selection of Works by Rafaël Rozendaal (@newrafael), 2023-25
Acquired on Dec. 19, 2025 through the generosity of @showsupnaked and @fellowshiptrust.
"The donated works trace Rozendaal’s evolving digital practice across multiple formats and bring together six on-chain non-fungible tokens, each realized as JavaScript generative code on Ethereum, and a landmark website-based work, underscoring Rozendaal’s longstanding engagement with the internet and the browser as sites for contemporary abstraction."
Quote from Fellowship.
pretty cool that the inventor of excruciating corporate ass eating online grabbed a crypto punk. I for one still hold my linkedin 10K project from the microsoft orifice premium pvp platform back in 2004.
we are horrifically fucking back.
We need more art that is "hard to sell" because it is weird and inefficient. Art that gives no certainty, but offers an impulse to support ideas that are counter to the status quo. Art that doesn't claim to be the next big thing and is just trying to say something obsessively so that we all see the world differently. We need more art that understands where it comes from and uses that to question itself and why we should care at all for it. We need art that is willing to go unnoticed for the sake of being free from norms. We need more art that can build new questions about what art can be.
👀 @ChristiesInc ‘s closing its talented digital art department is easy to read as “NFTs are dead.” But that misses the bigger story in my opinion.
What’s happening is the same pattern we’ve seen whenever a new medium collides with old institutions. Photography, video, even Impressionism all went through the same arc of being dismissed, overhyped, segregated, and finally absorbed.
NFTs just compressed the timeline. The boom of 2021 wasn’t cultural settlement, it was liquidity froth. Auction houses tried to bolt on digital art teams, but the economics never fit very well. Why charge 25% commissions to handle works that don’t need vaults, shipping, or insurance and have infinitely scalable digital sales distribution?
But this is definitely not an obituary. It’s the graduation moment. Digital art doesn’t need its own department any more than photography does today. It belongs in the same conversation as contemporary painting and sculpture.
We are entering an age where everything—from AI-generated media to Bitcoin inscriptions—is born digital. Provenance, authenticity, and permanence will be defined on-chain. Art is just the first arena where this shift becomes visible.
So yes, the short-term headline is bearish. But the long-term arc is profound. We are building the cultural memory of the digital age. The works that matter will be the ones that stand up not just as speculation, but as art. They will be anchored in permanence, provenance, and meaning.
Christie’s didn’t shut the door on digital art but they did confirm it’s no longer a novelty. 🔥
50,000 art hoes will save San Francisco: The vision for jumpstarting joie de vivre and re-enchanting hollowed out tech bros
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How Artist Rafaël Rozendaal Transformed Websites into Artworks 💡
Since the early 2000s, Rafaël Rozendaal has been turning the internet into a canvas. His single-serving websites, minimal animations that live at their own domains, were among the first artworks made to be experienced online, open to anyone, anywhere.
↓ This video shares how that simple idea grew into a career exploring ownership, openness, and art that lives both on screens and in museums.
I’ve had some private outreach for a couple very special artworks in my possession. It’s flattering, just a heads up I didn’t hold through a bear market just to give artworks away in 2025.
To pretend crypto is at ATH and NFTs aren’t coming back something I am unable to do.