Jonas Lund
Jonas Lund is a Swedish conceptual artist who creates paintings, sculpture, photography, websites, video works and performances that critically reflect on contemporary networked systems, power structures, and the mechanisms of the art world. His practice is characterized by the use of algorithms, artificial intelligence, and participatory frameworks that interrogate value production, authorship, and decision-making in both digital ecosystems and traditional art institutions.
Biography
Lund was born in 1984 in Linköping, Sweden. He earned a BFA at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam and an MA at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.Lund was an Eyebeam resident in 2012. In 2016, he was an artist in residence at Capacete in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He has received commissions from the Mozilla Foundation, the Goethe-Institut Minneapolis, and the LIMA Collection in Amsterdam. In 2017, his work "Fair Warning" was shortlisted for the net_based award, and in 2023, "The Future of Nothing" was shortlisted for the Lumen Prize Moving Image Award. In 2025, his work "MVP " was awarded the inaugural Prix Arts numériques by the Fondation Etrillard and the Académie des beaux-arts, marking the first time digital art was recognized by the French Academy of Fine Arts.
Lund's work has been acquired by major institutions including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Lund is the co-host of the Great Intentions podcast with Roel Wouters.
Work
Artistic practice
Lund's artistic practice involves creating systems and setting up parameters that oftentimes require engagement from the viewer. This results in game-like artworks where tasks are executed according to algorithms or a set of rules. Through his works, Lund investigates the latest issues generated by the increasing digitalisation of contemporary society like authorship, participation and authority. At the same time, he questions the mechanisms of the art world; he challenges the production process, authoritative power and art market practices.A recurring theme in Lund's work is the relationship between quantification and value. His projects often expose how value is constructed through metrics, data, and collective behavior, revealing the arbitrary and circular nature of value production in both the art market and digital platforms. By making these mechanisms visible and participatory, Lund creates situations where viewers become complicit in the systems he critiques.
Artificial intelligence and automation
Since 2022, Lund has increasingly focused on artificial intelligence and its implications for creative labor, authorship, and the future of art production. His video trilogy consisting of "The Future of Nothing", "The Future of Something", and "The Future of Life" explores human anxieties about AI-driven automation through satirical narratives created in collaboration with various generative AI tools. These works examine the displacement of human creativity while simultaneously questioning the originality and value of much human-made art.Selected works
The Fear of Missing Out (2013)
The Fear of Missing Out was an exhibition presented at Showroom MAMA in Rotterdam, taking its title from a social-network-induced anxiety condition describing the urge to keep up with a rapidly moving world and the fear of being left behind. The show proposed that it might be possible to stay one step ahead of the art world by using well-crafted algorithms and computational logic.The works in the exhibition were generated from a computer algorithm written by Lund that analysed and categorised a large dataset of artworks by successful contemporary artists. From this analysis, the program produced a detailed set of step-by-step instructions describing how to make the "most successful" artworks. Lund then followed these algorithmic directives to produce the pieces in the show. By doing so, he questioned traditional art-world notions of authenticity, talent, and creativity, while highlighting the cultural obsession with quantification and optimisation.
Curated by Gerben Willers, the exhibition opened on 11 October 2013 following an in-situ production period in which Lund developed the works publicly within the space. The Fear of Missing Out also referred to the pervasive desire to participate in a transparent, interconnected information society—one governed by algorithms and real-time data flows.
Flip City (2014)
In 2014 Lund created a painting series called Flip City that was first exhibited at Steve Turner in Los Angeles. Each of the forty paintings had GPS trackers attached to the back that shared its current location once a day to the Flip City website. The work aimed to explore the manipulative nature of the art market, in particular the habit of a group of collectors to quickly sell and resell artworks for increased profits, typically referred to as 'flipping'.VIP (Viewer Improved Painting) (2014)
VIP is a self-optimising digital painting consisting of two large monitors in custom metal frames with a gaze-tracking camera placed between them. By measuring the viewer's gaze, the work continuously tests different compositions and colour sets, iteratively approaching the most "optimal" and attention-grabbing image. The system evolves in real time, modifying its aesthetic output based on live audience engagement.The technology of gaze tracking is commonly used in advertising, web usability, sponsorship, and design research. Lund's use of it within an art context critiques the quantification of aesthetic value and the increasing alignment between audience analytics and creative production. As the title suggests, VIP ironically positions every viewer as a "Very Important Person," yet their collective gaze merely feeds an optimisation algorithm. The work reflects how metrics of attention and popularity influence artistic decision-making in both online and institutional environments.
Studio Practice (2014)
Studio Practice was an exhibition held at Boetzelaer|Nispen Gallery in Amsterdam from 6 September to 11 October 2014. For the duration of the show, Lund transformed the gallery into a functioning production studio by hiring four assistants to create artworks according to a 300-page instruction manual written by the artist. Each completed work was evaluated online by an advisory board consisting of artists, collectors, and gallerists, who voted on whether the work should be signed by Lund or destroyed. The process was streamed live and archived on a dedicated website, , which displayed real-time footage, board assessments, and Lund's commentary.The project exposed and gamified the mechanisms of authorship, labour, and delegation in contemporary art, blurring distinctions between artist and assistant, studio and gallery, production and critique. By outsourcing the making process while retaining the final authority of authorship, Studio Practice offered a transparent, performative reflection on the art world's own systems of evaluation and value creation.
Strings Attached (2015)
Strings Attached was a solo exhibition at Steve Turner Gallery in Los Angeles featuring 24 text-based paintings that relate to the contemporary art market bubble. Each work uses text that restricts the transfer of ownership in some way. Lund used fabric wallpaper as backgrounds for the works, with messages painted by a sign painter according to his directions. As a group, the 24 paintings encompass contradictory efforts made by gallerists who both want to fuel market momentum for their artists while trying to shield them from the damaging effects of quick-profit speculation.Examples from the series include "Control," which states "THIS PAINTING MAY NEVER BE OFFERED AT AUCTION"; "HUO," which reads "THIS PAINTING MAY ONLY BE PURCHASED BY A COLLECTOR WHO HAS APPEARED IN ARTFORUM'S SCENE & HERD AT LEAST FIVE TIMES"; "Loyalty," stating "THIS PAINTING MAY ONLY BE PURCHASED BY A COLLECTOR WHO AGREES TO PURCHASE TWO MORE WORKS BY THE ARTIST BEFORE MARCH 21, 2017"; and "Commitment," which declares "THIS PAINTING MAY ONLY BE PURCHASED BY A COLLECTOR WHO ALSO AGREES TO PURCHASE DONATION."
"Donation" is a painting from the series that could only be purchased by a collector who agreed to donate it to one of six specified museums by 21 March 2020. The work was subsequently donated to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam shortly before the deadline. The series examines the relationship between private collecting and public institutions while questioning how artworks gain legitimacy through institutional validation and the mechanisms of market control.
Fair Warning (2016)
Fair Warning is an online work jointly commissioned by the Whitechapel Gallery and Phillips, coinciding with the exhibition Electronic Superhighway. The work is a series of test environments installed on the websites of both institutions, designed to discover, measure and quantify taste profiles of the contemporary art audience. Over 300 rapidly changing tests, from simple questionnaires to visual comparison tests, are used to quantify and measure taste and personal preference as it relates to the general public.The project examines the value and use of data collection when attempting to represent user tastes and questions whether an objective way of measuring the value of art exists. Playing with expectations of traditional online questionnaires or personality tests, Fair Warning both embraces and attempts to demystify website analytics and testing tools. The clicks and cursors of all users can be seen when engaging with the work, making the data collection process visible. The results are distilled to relationships between hype mechanisms and value creation within the contemporary art world.
In a society obsessed with quantification and metrics of evaluation, Fair Warning questions how the greater cultural value of art can be justified and funded if it cannot be measured or quantified until it is sold. The work was shortlisted for the net_based award in 2017 and is held in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.