The exhibition Ɛցɾҽցօɾҽʂ & GRIMOIRES by Jon Rafman @jonrafman continues @schinkelpavillon until December 31, 2022 One of the key voices emerging from the post-internet moment, Jon Rafman’s work explores subjects of fantasy, world-building, online subcultures, and the virtual world of gaming. Taking inspiration from the web’s deeper and darker fringes, Rafman explores the influence of the internet and its effects on our human consciousness and psyche, in both the dual-sense of community and alienation it exacerbates. The exhibition takes its titles from the language of magik, a Grimoire, and Egregore, an Occult concept which represents a non-physical entity arriving from the collective unconscious. Historically this concept has referred to angels, guardians and watchers of a specific group of people, and their specific rituals and practices. Here Rafman creates a coherence, or throughline to the proliferation of images of the internet, revealing in the process its collective unconscious. мιησя ∂αємση (2022), tells the story of the intersecting lives and fortunes of two young men Billy and Minor Daemon, set in a surreal virtual dystopia not unlike our own. Billy, a pampered prep school boy, Minor Daemon abandoned at birth, share together an extraordinary gift for virtual reality gaming, we follow their journey through incarceration where their shared talent will secure their freedom. In ₱Ʉ₦₵₮ɄⱤɆĐ ₴₭Ɏ (2021) Rafman’s latest work, a gamer’s past coalesces with uncanny obstacles, part-human avatars and early internet aesthetics as we follow him on an unsettling journey through the dark web in search of an old computer game which has seemingly disappeared from the internet without a trace. Elsewhere ᖴᗩᑕIᗩᒪᔕ I maps the unwrapped, 3D scans of human faces intended for use in video game design. Here they appear depersonalised, abject and savage, as we watch them stretch and shift into deformity. Special thanks to @spruethmagers for their generous support. Exhibition documentation by Frank Sperling #jonrafman #schinkelpavillon