During the festive opening of NAP+ 2025, Upstream Gallery's booth with Jan Robert Leegte, presenting the nine screen installation Shadow (2025), won the title of best booth!

Jan Robert Leegte (NL, 1973) started working as an artist on the Internet in 1997, continuing till today in the field of NFTs. In 2002, he shifted his main focus to implementing digital materials in the context of the physical gallery space, making prints, drawings, sculpture, installations and projections, connecting to historical movements like land art, minimalism and conceptualism. As an artist, Leegte explores the position of the new materials put forward by the (networked) computer.

His work has been exhibited internationally (among others, Whitechapel Gallery, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, ZKM Karlsruhe, Centre Pompidou, Ludwig Museum, and MAAT Lisbon) and is held in public and private collections.

Shadow

Shadow is a multi-screen video installation consisting of 9 monitors. Rendered entirely in the Unity game engine, the work presents an artificial island or constructed landscape under a relentless summer sun. In each video, a large square shadow is cast across a different section of the terrain, slowly moving. The camera shifts with each screen—sometimes from high above, sometimes skimming the surface, always varying in angle and scale —creating a fragmented but resonant panorama of place.

The environment is vivid and nervous: trees and grasses are tossed by a strong, persistent wind, and sunlight glares off surfaces. The landscape, though in a beautiful summer state, feels threatening. The recurring square shadow echoing the nothingness in Robert Fludd's Utriusque Cosmi (1617) becomes a looming presence—an unnatural interruption that feels symbolic of the unease.

The work is a continuation of Performing a Landscape (2020), and together they reflect on the evolving relationship between technology, particularly the networked computer, and the climate crisis. The viewer is caught between immersion in a sensual world and the unease of witnessing its destabilisation.

 

Images: installation shots of Shadow (2025) by Jan Robert Leegte @ NAP+

 

NAP+
12/09 11:00 - 19:00
13/09 11:00 - 19:00
14/09 11:00 - 17:00
Centrale Markthal Amsterdam

The gallery is also open until Saturday from 13.00-18.00 with The Interfaced and The Compass: Playing Realities by Kévin Bray.

Publication date: 12 Sep '25