Opening Reception: Friday April 3, 6pm
504 E 12 St, 10009 New York
Interface Gallery together with Nguyen Wahed presents Senescenence, a solo exhibition by Harm van den Dorpel. The exhibition brings together a body of generative animations built upon a cellular automaton in the tradition of Conway's Game of Life, where a minimal set of rules gives rise to extraordinary complexity, and where death is not failure but the system's natural feature. Alongside the screen-based works, the exhibition also includes a series of plotter drawings on paper — tracing the same generative logic into an anachronistic register.
The title, Senescenence, is an intentional recursive misspelling of "senescence," the term for the gradual aging or deterioration of living systems, often associated with the browning of fallen leaves.
The works emerge from Van den Dorpel's ongoing research into the foundations of generative art: from the binary logic of the weaving loom, to early two-dimensional pixel graphics, to the contemporary GPU, where millions of cells can live, die, and transform simultaneously in real time. At each technological threshold, the capacity for complexity expands beyond full human control. The visual language draws on traditions that understand pattern as more than ornamentation. References to Anni Albers' textiles, Buddhist mandalas, and stained-glass windows evoke rule-based systems in which local decisions accumulate into forms that exceed their individual construction. In these systems, structure becomes a carrier of meaning. This aligns with a much older cross-cultural intuition: that geometry is not merely descriptive but generative. Within traditions of sacred geometry, structure and spirit are intertwined rather than opposed. Van den Dorpel approaches the algorithm with this mindset, not simply as a tool of expression, but as a system set into motion to allow unforeseen forms to emerge beyond the artist's direct control. The works are less composed than initiated; what appears on screen is not fully designed, but permitted.
Each cell exists only in relation to its neighbours, recursively and conditionally. Nothing endures. The patterns that surface are temporary negotiations with impermanence, and the work resists any attempt at final resolution.
About the artist:
Harm van den Dorpel (b. 1981) develops a practice centred on dynamic systems that continuously shift and adapt within technological environments. Working across media including drawing, sculpture, computer-generated imagery, and custom software, he constructs frameworks in which artworks evolve over time through algorithmic structures, recursion, and feedback mechanisms.
Van den Dorpel is widely regarded as a key figure within Post-Internet and generative art. His work investigates the relationship between human intuition and machine logic, often allowing algorithmic processes to participate in aesthetic decision-making and the formation of the final artwork.
He is also recognized as an early pioneer in the integration of blockchain technology into contemporary art. In 2015, the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna acquired his work Event Listeners using Bitcoin, marking the first time a museum purchased an artwork through blockchain technology, an event widely regarded as a foundational moment in the history of NFTs and digital art.
Van den Dorpel lives and works in Berlin. His work is held in major institutional collections including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, MAK Vienna, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and ZKM Karlsruhe. His work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as the New Museum and MoMA PS1 in New York, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, ZKM Karlsruhe, and the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam.
In 2015 he founded left gallery, an online platform dedicated to commissioning, producing, and distributing downloadable digital artworks, which played an important role in the early market infrastructure for digital and blockchain-based art.