They are digital natives, all born in 1984 or 1985 and raised in the early days of the World Wide Web: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Trisha Baga, Neïl Beloufa and Katja Novitskova. The nominees for the International Nam June Paik Award work with found objects or materials, which they fictionalize, while conversely materializing digital information. Whether these shortlisted candidates are counted as exponents of such movements as post-Internet art or the so-called New Aesthetic, whether they draw inspiration from the theory of Speculative Realism, one thing is for sure: these young artists, whose work is more exciting than anything we’ve seen in a long time, are totally breaking with modernity, as curator Susanne Pfeffer puts it, to probe what cultural theorist Timotheus Vermeulen calls the new depthiness.
