Upstream Focus: JPEG

Upstream Gallery proudly presents the new Upstream Focus exhibition with new JPEG artworks by Jan Robert Leegte.

Jan Robert Leegte is one of the first Dutch artists to make work on and about the Internet since the 1990s. As an artist, Leegte explores the position of the new materials put forward by the (networked) computer.

Since the early 90s, compression has been the driving force behind the image-based internet. Without compression, there would be no Netscape, social media, NFTs, or AI-generated images. JPEG compression has specifically enabled photography-based imagery on the net. It has always served that purpose, and over time became the default for showing high-quality images online. Nevertheless, compression always leaves a trace, which has become the slightly distorted lens through which the network sees the world of uploaded images.

The works from the JPEG series try to create an image programmatically fully expressing that signature compression. An image that is made from almost nothing, yet fully present in its blazing appearance. A work deeply material, expressing itself through the language of code and codec transferred to a plate of aluminium. This is not a JPEG depicting an image. The JPEG is the image itself. Where abstract expressionists cut out the depiction in painting, attempting to make the artist convey pure emotion, JPEG cuts out the artist’s emotion and lets it emerge from within the algorithm.

JPEG | Private Viewing Space at Upstream Gallery 
21 February - 9 March 2024