Arkive Debuts its First Design and Architecture Acquisition: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Hormonium

SAN FRANCISCO (October 20, 2022) – Arkive, the world’s first decentralized physical museum, has announced its most recent acquisition: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Hormonium, a generative artwork that presents sequences of ocean waves crashing and releasing airborne text particles. Combining complex chemistry with computer programming, the installation’s visual display connects crashing ocean waves with chemical acronyms to represent the chronobiological changes happening within the human body.

View Lozano-Hemmer’s entire exhibition, Common Measures, from Pace Gallery here: https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/rafael-lozano-hemmer-common-measures/.

Inspired by his growing children, Lozano-Hemmer’s work utilizes technology to depict the relationship between nature and human chemistry. Within our bodies, many different time cycles happen concurrently, from the circadian rhythms of waking and sleeping to the extended yet unceasing patterns of growth, reproduction, and aging. In Hormonium, Lozano-Hemmer reminds people to live in tandem with the ever-changing world around us, represented in the symbiosis between man and nature, chemicals and waves.

“Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is one of the few artists erasing the boundaries of technology, nature, and art while bridging the gap among all three. Lozano-Hemmer’s work is representative of all humans, and his artwork’s long but finite nature aligns with Arkive’s own mission to deconstruct how and what a museum’s collections can truly personify. The Arkive community is proud to welcome Hormonium to our collection and is inspired by the artist’s own reflective pieces,” said Tom McLeod, co-founder and Executive Director of Arkive.

Designed to live for 90 years, Lozano-Hemmer’s installation is currently hormonally zero years old. Created alongside an endocrinologist and a computer programmer, the work represents the connection between the individual physical vessel and the intrinsic chronology of all life systems—be it waves or chemical processes.

“Hormonium captures the universality of growth because of change. Some hormones crash quickly while others slowly wash over the shore. I hope that acquiring and elevating this work will inspire viewers to be compassionate towards others…making space for the chaos and beauty that we all experience with differing intensity through stages of life,” said a member of the Arkive community.

This acquisition joins five other artworks and cultural artifacts to expand Arkive’s ‘When Technology Was a Game Changer’ collection. The first cultural artifact introduced into Arkive’s collection was the patent for the world’s first computer, the ENIAC (1946). Next came Seduction (1985), a vintage photograph by Lynn Hershman Leeson, followed by the MTV Moonman prototype (1984) by Pat Gorman, which was then succeeded by Arkive’s first video art acquisition, Eulogy for a Black Mass by Aria Dean. Prior to Hormonium, Arkive’s most recent and fifth acquisition was Madonna’s three cloth fans from her “Vogue” performance for the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards.

Arkive is taking applications for the first 1,000 members. As an alpha member, you will have curatorial power, access to IRL and digital experiences, and early access to Arkive’s future NFT-based membership.

To apply to be an alpha member, visit Arkive.net.

About Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is a Mexico City-born artist who works at the intersection of architecture and performance art, creating platforms for public participation using technologies such as robotic lights, digital fountains, computerized surveillance, media walls, and telematic networks. Inspired by phantasmagoria, carnival, and animatronics, his light and shadow works are, in his words, “anti-monuments for alien agency.”

Lozano-Hemmer was the first artist to represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale with an exhibition at Palazzo Van Axel in 2007, and his work has been shown at biennials in Cuenca, Havana, Istanbul, Kochi, Liverpool, Melbourne NGV, Moscow, New Orleans, New York ICP, Seoul, Seville, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, and Wuzhen. His public art has been commissioned for the Millennium Celebrations in Mexico City (1999), the Expansion of the European Union in Dublin (2004), the Student Massacre Memorial in Tlatelolco (2008), the Vancouver Olympics (2010), the pre-opening exhibition of the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi (2015), and the activation of the Raurica Roman Theatre in Basel (2018).

About Arkive
Arkive is the world’s first decentralized physical museum. Arkive’s brand-new model of how a museum can operate gives the people the power to curate and select what items are culturally significant rather than institutions. Built by alums from MoMA and Gagosian, Arkive was co-founded by Tom McLeod, a 5x founder who exited his last startup, Omni, to Coinbase, and prior to that, ran Pagelime (acquired by SurrealCMS in 2015), LolConnect (acquired by Tencent in 2012), and Imaginary Feet which developed 15+ profitable iPhone apps enjoyed by over 10 million users.

For more information, visit Arkive.net.

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Brook Klingel
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