Quick Facts
Biography
Rachel Rossin (born 1987, West Palm Beach, Florida) is a multi-media and installation artist based in New York City. She is regarded as one of the pioneers of the artistic medium of virtual reality. Rossin is known for manipulating digital technology to create immersive environments. In her work, Rossin often aims to define new experiences regarding transcendence and perception. She works by blending the worlds of painting and digital media by using game-engine physics, procedural programming and traditional oil painting and airbrush to create virtual reality installations, paintings and sculptures.
Personal life
At the age of 16, Rossin is quoted saying that her first gallery experience impacted her in a profound way. Her mother brought her to the Whitney Museum of American Art where she was attracted to Kiki Smith’s wax figures. Rossin says: “I hated them and I loved them because they were both repulsive and tender. These feelings kept competing and rolling over each other for the front of my mind. ”
Career
Solo Work
In 2015, Rossin’s exhibition, N=7/The Wake in Heat of Collapse, located at SIGNAL in New York, New York, was a virtual reality simulation that employs the structure of side-scrolling gameplay to create an immersive, Oculus Rift-based experience. Additionally, in 2015, Rossin held her work, Shelter of a Limping Substrate, at the Elliott Levenglick Gallery. Shelter of a Limping Substrate refers to the underlying layer in 3D imaging. She created formal en plein air paintings, which then were reimagined in virtual reality CAD software.
From October 15—November 14, 2015, Rachel held her work, Lossy, at the ZieherSmith, a contemporary art gallery in New York City. In Rossin’s words: “The exhibition posits that our relationship with reality isn't comprised of a separate virtual and real but looks more like a gradient between the two— with most of our modern lives being lived in the action of hopping from screen to screen. Like lossy compression, this process includes entropy as an inherent given— in optimizing what already exists by omitting the excess in worlds with their own internal logic.”
From December 9, 2016—January 15, 2017, the exhibition, My Little Green Leaf was held in partnership with Art in General and kim? Contemporary Art Centre in Riga, Latvia. The installation piece interweaves the viewers interactive experience with virtual reality and physical space.
In 2017, she debuted a piece The Sky is a Gap, where she mapped a room-scale virtual reality installation to move 3D time and explosions by the user's movements.
Group work
From January 19, 2017—March 3, 2017 Rossin participated in ‘The Unframed World’ located at the HeK (House of electronic Arts Basel) in Basel, Switzerland. This group exhibition presented various approaches in using virtual reality as an artistic medium.
From March 17, 2017—May 31, 2017 Rossin is working with other artists at Chi K11 Art Museum in Shanghai, China.
Rossin will be partaking in a group exhibition ‘ARS17’ at Kiasma located in Helsinki, Finland from March 31, 2017—January 14, 2018. This exhibition will stage international artists working under the theme of digital revolution.
Awards and fellowships
- Fellowship in Virtual Reality at New Museum's Incubator New Inc (2015-2016)
- Kate Spade & Co Foundation Grant (2015)
- Cultured Magazine '30 under 35' (2016)
- Forbes '30 Under 30' in Art & Style (2017)