Keith Haring carpet? Wassily wallpaper? Hockney homewares? Jon Rafman's Brand New Paint Job!

Date
1 August 2012

Jon Rafman is an artist widely-known for his 9-Eyes project (currently exhibiting at London’s Saatchi Gallery) that sees him digitally traverse the byways and highways of Google Street View, capturing images with the incidental eye of a street photographer. This is his medium: utilising existing imagery and software, which is accessible to anyone near the internet, and presenting it in new and unexpected contexts. With that in mind, in none of his series are the web tools at his disposal more successfully manipulated than the ongoing Brand New Paint Job.

Using Google’s 3D Warehouse, Rafman picks objects and interiors and wallpapers, shrink-wraps, drapes and carpets them with the works of the modern masters. This coalescence of low and high brow, surface and form, mass production and high art, reality and unreality is a comment on what? The suggestion of an over-commercialised art world? A comment about the “everyone’s a curator” debate? A post-modern interior designer fantasy?

Whatever it is, it’s accessible and aesthetic joviality on style and the subversive propagation of art online – also, who wouldn’t want to drink Campari spritzers in a Modigliani tavern?!

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Jon Rafman: Brand New Paint Job

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Jon Rafman: Brand New Paint Job – Matisse Boy’s Room, 2011

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Jon Rafman: Brand New Paint Job – Modigliani Tavern, 2010

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Jon Rafman: Brand New Paint Job – Keith Haring Lobby, 2010

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Jon Rafman: Brand New Paint Job – Juan Gris Study, 2010

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Jon Rafman: Brand New Paint Job – Mehretu Pharoah, 2011

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Jon Rafman: Brand New Paint Job – El Lissitzky Video Editing Suite, 2011

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Jon Rafman: Brand New Paint Job – Jasper Johns Oval Office, 2010

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About the Author

Bryony Quinn

Bryony was It’s Nice That’s first ever intern and worked her way up to assistant online editor before moving on to pursue other interests in the summer of 2012.

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