Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 10: On-Chain Era (2020s)

2021

Unstable Presence by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at SFMOMA

Exhibition · North America

The header image of SFMOMA's Unstable Presence page: four visitors standing at the edge of a low basin of illuminated fog, an installation view of Lozano-Hemmer's Call on Water.
The header image of SFMOMA's Unstable Presence page: four visitors standing at the edge of a low basin of illuminated fog, an installation view of Lozano-Hemmer's Call on Water. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Call on Water, 2016 (installation view, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, 2019). Courtesy the artist and bitforms, Max Estrella and Wilde galleries. (c) Rafael Lozano-Hemmer / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VEGAP, Spain. Photo: Mariana Yanez. Via SFMOMA.

This October mid-career retrospective was co-produced by the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal and SFMOMA. Unstable Presence displayed work from the decades-long career of Lozano-Hemmer. Known for his large-scale, participatory installations, the artist explores where technology, architecture and audience interaction meet. The exhibition featured a series of works that emphasized the transient nature of physical presence within natural and technological environments. By engaging viewers through interactive and performative installations, Unstable Presence, like much of Lozano-Hemmer’s work, highlights the poetic and political dimensions of our interactions with space, offering a unique commentary on the fluid nature of the ephemeral and the enduring.

Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.

Sources

People

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Movements

generative art, Installation Art

Filed under

Ideas
architecture, audience participation, generative art, impermanence, Installation Art, Interactive Art, interactivity, Participatory Art, performance, presence
People
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Exhibitions
Unstable Presence
Organisations
Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, October, SFMOMA
Places
Montreal, San Francisco

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