Andy Rolfes is a New York-based visual artist and director focusing their practice on how the dichotomy between escapism and voyeurism plays out in the spaces between tech and physicality. Using performative and interactive toolsets alongside traditional methods, they work extensively across industries to build stills, animations, performances and interactive experiences.
Past clients include: Lady Gaga, Danny Elfman, MoMA, Nike, Versace, SSENSE, Nicopanda, Two Hustlers, KAIMIN, Landlord, Axel Arigato, Cartier, Interscope Records, OWSLA, Awful Records, Super Deluxe, Adult Swim, Meow Wolf, Global Fashion News, IMPRESSION Magazine, MOLD Magazine, Novembre Magazine and more.
He also co-runs the performance and image agency, Team Rolfes, and can be found online or wandering around Brooklyn.
Using my own voyeuristic perspective, my practice explores how much I project my own ideas of identity and escapism onto both the people I know and strangers I spy on among the crowd. Subverting the comforts of reality by wrangling a sense of verisimilitude out of stylized scenes, I seek to disjoint and confuse with rich amalgams of traditional and new mediums.
Starting with my personal photography archives, including moments with friends and events where I perform as a fly on a wall, I simulate the strange re-contextualization, aesthetic distortion and abstraction that occur in translating another person's sense of identity within contemporary society. Meanwhile, I look to Surrealism, theoretical physics, mass culture and other methods of stealing and stylizing reality for my own means.
My final products are results of combining virtual abstractions and recognizable physical motifs like building blocks, displaying the fantastic and surreal scenes formed by the collision of one identity into another.
EXHIBITIONS
2022
Mizaji Gallery
Portland, Oregon
2021
2092.world
Group exhibition
Online (Linked Here)
2016
SUBCHROMA
"Exit Left", commissioned for the show
Chicago, IL
For The Love Of Birds And Art
TWU Hubbard Hall; Denton, TX
2015
REVOLVE
Josey Records; Farmers Branch, TX
2014
TOTAL PERSPECTIVE VORTEX (solo show)
The Whitehouse; Denton, TX
Senior Drawing and Painting Show
Cora Stafford Gallery; Denton, TX
Against the Current
Cora Stafford
RAW Dallas presents: SPECTRUM
Lizard Lounge; Dallas, TX
POP UP
WAAS Gallery; Dallas, TX
54th Annual Voertman’s Student Competition
UNT Art Gallery; Denton, TX
2013
“Ebb & Flow: a watercolor exhibition”
Cora Stafford Gallery
First Friday
Oxide Gallery; Denton, TX
“No Need To Resist”
Cora Stafford Gallery
53rd Annual Voertman’s Student Competition
UNT Art Gallery; Denton, TX
2012
52nd Annual Voertman’s Student Competition
UNT Art Gallery
All Level Watercolor
UNT North Gallery; Denton, TX
Scholarship Recipient
UNT Lightwell Gallery; Denton, TX
2010
Drawing II Core
UNT Lightwell Gallery
Life at UNT: Mural collaboration (permanent)
Kerr Cafeteria, UNT Denton Campus