https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Robert_Leegte
“I have been following the work of Jan Robert Leegte for many years and he keeps surprising me. I’ll try to put into words why, and I just hope I find the right ones. Leegte’s work can seem quite formal at times (though there always is a playful edge), yet somehow there is often a quirky poetic undertone hidden in there as well, something you need to take a bit of time for. With his current show at Upstream Leegte’s work seems to have gained more ‘inner space’ then ever before, a smart combination of his typical formal approach, playfulness and poetics. There is a lot of translation from one code universe/object to a completely different, but somehow still related, visual one. This happens in the large, overwhelming installation in the front room (where the smaller videos show strange architectural islands that are visual translations of inner code of software tools), but also in the small plotter drawings in the side room ( Leegte making the computer draw parts of itself, if I understand it correctly). There are the straight-edge ‘In the Blink of an Eye’ prints showing how far various devices Leegte worked with can count in that short time your eyes can blink. The difference between his first computer, an old type Commodore, and his current smartphone is staggering. There is the 5 % of profits to go to the planting of trees as a gesture to lower the carbon footprint of the exhibition, which feels kind of odd because of the apocalyptic feel of the large installation. And then there is the burst of color, sound and movement in that installation. I guess those surprised me the most. Leegte’s work is often quite static even if deep, and this is nothing like that. In hindsight some of his earlier works seemed to have worked in this direction. I am thinking in particular of ‘Google Maps as a Sculpture’ (which looks so unreal it makes you rub your eyes when standing in front of it) and his ‘Remake of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty in Minecraft’. Still this is something else. Here Jan Robert Leegte took a giant leap, avoiding the kitschy digital imagery I see too much of, and merging that inside and outside of that roller coaster that is our life at the edge of the real these days.”
Josephine Bosma