Casey Reas
B.1972
Introduction
Casey Reas is an artist and educator who lives in Los Angeles. His software, prints, and installations have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at institutions and galleries. His work ranges from works on paper to urban-scale installations, and he balances solo work in the studio with collaborations. Reas’ work is in a range of private and public collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Reas is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles where he is also co-director of UCLA Social Software. He holds a masters degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Media Arts and Sciences and a bachelor’s degree from the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. Reas co-founded Processing in 2001; Processing is an open-source programming language and environment for the visual arts. He is the author of many books including Compressed Cinema (2023) and Making Pictures with Generative Adversarial Networks (2019), both published by Anteism.
Selected Solo, Two-Person Exhibitions, 2000 – present
2024
Wet and Saturated Process. Unit. London, UK
2023
It Doesn’t Exist (In Any Other Form). bitforms. New York, NY.
Conjured Terrain. Vellum. Los Angeles, CA and DAM. Berlin, Germany.
923 Empty Rooms. Bright Moments. Tokyo, Japan; Berlin, Germany; London, UK; New York, NY. Mexico City, Mexico; Los Angeles, CA.
An Empty Room. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), CA.
2021
Alchemical. bitforms gallery. New York, NY.
2019
Compressed Cinema. DAM. Berlin, Germany.
2016
There’s No Distance. bitforms gallery. New York, NY.
2015
Tox Screen. Art Center. Shanghai, China.
Linear Perspective. Charlie James Gallery. Los Angeles, CA.
2014
Yes No. Pasadena City College. Pasadena, CA.
2013
Ultraconcentrated. bitforms gallery. New York, NY.
2012
CENTURY. Gallery [DAM] Berlin. Berlin, Germany.
Process. BCA Center. Burlington, VT.
2010
Process Compendium 2004–2010. Gallery [DAM] Berlin. Berlin, Germany.
2009
Transfers and Actions. Mejan Labs, Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Stockholm, Sweden.
Code and Form. Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Pittsburgh, PA.
2008
Process / Form. bitforms gallery. New York, NY.
2007
The Protean Image. <>TAG. The Hague, Netherlands.
2006
Casey Reas and Suzung Kim. bitforms gallery. Seoul, Korea.
2005
Process / Drawing 2. Gallery [DAM] Berlin. Berlin, Germany.
Process / Drawing. bitforms gallery, New York, NY.
2004
TI. Telic Arts Exchange, Los Angeles, CA.
2002
The Art of Code: Golan Levin and Casey Reas. bitforms gallery, New York, NY.
Selected Group Exhibitions, Screenings, Performances, 2000 – present
2024
Poems in Code. Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions. Tokyo, Japan.
A la recherche of Vera Molnar. Wolfgang Museum. Budapest, Hungary.
2023
Influentia. IEGO Art Gallery. Taipei, Taiwan.
Infinite Games: Hello, World! 798 Art Zone. Beijing, China.
Compressed Cinema. Anthology Film Archive. New York, NY.
Interreality. Desmond Tower. Los Angeles, CA.
Node to Node. Kate Vass Galerie. Paris, France.
A Full Room. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Los Angeles, CA.
Cartography of the Soul. Christie’s. New York, NY.
Co-Created: The Artist in the Age of Intelligent Machines. Burlington City Arts (BCA). Burlington, Vermont.
A Leap into the Void. Art beyond Matter. GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo. Bergamo, Italy.
Machine Imaginaire | Vera Molnar. DAM Projects. Berlin, Germany.
2022
Unit Take-Over. Nassima Landau Art Foundation. Tel Aviv, Israel.
In Our Code. Unit. London, UK.
Ex-Machina: A History of Generative Art. Phillip’s. London, UK.
Mimèsis. Un design vivant. Centre Pompidou-Metz. Metz, France.
Cartography of the Mind. Christie’s. New York, NY.
RAWWAR. DAM Projects. Berlin, German.
2021
A Generative Movement. Minnesota Street Projects. San Francisco, CA.
AI Delivered: The Abject. Chronus Art Center (CAC). Shanghai, China.
Tech/Know/Future: From Slang to Structure. George Segal Gallery. Montclair State University. Montclair, NJ.
Proof of Art. Francisco Carolinum. Linz, Austria.
Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale. Sotheby’s. London, UK; New York, NY; Hong Kong, China.
2020
Design & the Wondrous: On the Nature of Ornament. Centre Pompidou x West Bund. Shanghai, China.
Thin as Thorns, In These Thoughts in Us: An Exhibition of Creative AI and Generative Art. Honor Fraser. Los Angeles, CA.
Immaterial/Re-material: A Brief History of Computing Art. UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. Beijing, China.
GANLand. DAM Gallery. Berlin, Germany.
2019
Super Mosaic. Lei Shing Hong Art Center. Beijing, China.
Illusionary Nature. Museum Sinclair-Haus. Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany.
With A Little Help From My Friends. Charlie James Gallery. Los Angeles, CA.
Automat und Mensch. Kate Vass Galerie. Zürich, Switzerland.
ROW DTLA. bitforms gallery LA. Los Angeles, CA.
2018
Design et merveilleux : de la nature de l’ornement. Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole. Saint-Étienne, France.
Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965 – 2018. Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, NY.
The Art of Transformation. Kulturhaus der BASF. Schwarzheide, Germany.
Chance and Control: Art in the Age of Computers. Victoria and Albert Museum. London, UK.
Summer Splash 4. DAM Gallery. Berlin, Germany.
Coder le monde: Mutations / Créations 2. Centre Pompidou. Paris, France.
Mis (missing) Information. Charlie James Gallery. Los Angeles, CA.
Make Pictures. bitforms gallery. New York, NY.
2017
Drawn from a Score. Beall Center for Art and Technology. Irvine, CA.
Ars Electronica Festival. Moviemento. Linz, Austria.
This is How it Ends. Coaxial. Los Angeles, CA.
Guilty Party. Basilica Hudson. Hudson, NY.
Crooked Data: (Mis)Information in Contemporary Art. University of Richmond, Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art. Richmond, VA.
2016
DAM:TEMPORARY. DAM Gallery. Berlin, Germany.
CODE and NOISE. El Museo Cultural De Santa Fe. Santa Fe, NM.
Code + Poetry. DAM Gallery. Berlin, Germany.
DIGITRA. Treviso Ricerca Arte. Treviso, Italy.
2015
Pushing the Press. A+D Museum. Los Angeles, CA.
Technics and Touch: Body-Matter-Machine. RMIT. Melbourne, Australia.
Aesthetica. DAM Gallery. Berlin, Germany.
Short Cuts. CentrePasquArt. Biel, Switzerland.
Free State Festival. Lawrence Arts Center. Lawrence, KS.
2014
ARTMIX. Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Boulder, CO.
NYC Makers: The MAD Biennial. Museum of Arts and Design. New York, NY.
EXEMPLARY, 150 Years of the MAK From Arts and Crafts to Design. MAK Museum of Applied Arts. Vienna, Austria.
//the_ART_of_DATA. Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Boulder, CO.
Coding the Body. apexart. New York, NY.
2013
No Message Whatsoever. DAM Gallery. Berlin, Germany.
Zeitzünder. DAM Gallery. Frankfurt, Germany.
Paddles ON!, a benefit auction for Rhizome. Phillips. New York, NY.
ArchiLab. FRAC Centre. Orléans, France.
do it 2013. Manchester Art Gallery. Manchester, UK.
A New Sculpturalism. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Los Angeles, CA.
Run Computer Run: Examining Aesthetics. Rua Red. Dublin, Ireland.
Back to Back. Gallery [DAM]Frankfurt. Germany.
Poetic Codings. Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA.
AI Plus. National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Taipei, Taiwan.
2012
Field Conditions. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. San Francisco, CA.
Multiversités Créatives. Centre Pompidou. Paris, France.
World on a Wire. bitforms gallery. New York, NY.
Rethinking Typologies. The Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, IL.
The Creators Project. Fort Mason. San Francisco, CA.
Think Line 2. Gallery [DAM] Berlin. Berlin, Germany.
Seeing/Knowing. Graham Gund Gallery, Kenyon College. Gambier, OH.
Deep Surface. CAM Raleigh. Raleigh, NC.
2010
File Type. Gallery 400. Chicago, IL.
Hyperlinks: Architecture and Design. Art Institute of Chicago.
Quotidian Architectures. 12th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Hong Kong Pavilion. Venice, Italy.
Machinic Processes. Architecture Biennial Beijing 2010. Beijing, China.
Immuring. SCI-Arc Gallery. Los Angeles, CA.
E-Volve. Gallery [DAM]Cologne. Cologne, Germany.
Process as Paradigm. Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial. Gíjon, Spain.
2009
Decode: Digital Design Sensations. Victoria & Albert Museum, Porter Gallery. London, UK.
OPEN. Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. San Francisco, CA.
Art + Electronic Media. bitforms gallery. New York, NY.
Incognito. Santa Monica Museum of Art. Santa Monica, CA.
Loops. MIT Museum. Cambridge, MA.
Abstract Cinema. Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. North Miami, FL.
I’ll be your mirror. BANK gallery. Los Angeles, CA.
Scalable Relations. Beall Center for Art + Technology. Irvine, CA.
2008
MR.xpo 22 _ C.E.B. Reas. MediaRuimte. Brussels, Belgium.
eLandscapes. Zendai Museum of Modern Art. Shanghai, China.
Algorists 2008. Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP), University of California, Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara, CA.
Digital Senses. Center for Contemporary Art, Kiev, Ukraine.
Holy Fire. iMAL Center, Brussels.
Space, Color, and Motion. Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University. Evanston, IL.
2007
Ars Electronica. Shanghai eArts Festival 2007.
Ephemeral: Explorations in Light. Claremont Museum of Art. Claremont CA.
FEEDBACK. Laboral Centro de Arte. Gijón, Spain.
Our Distance from Things. Telic Arts Exchange. Los Angeles, CA.
2006
Design Life Now: National Design Triennial. Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. New York, NY.
Cybernetic Sensibility. Daelim Contemporary Art Museum. Seoul, Korea.
Living Culture. Eyebeam. New York, NY.
Drawing / Painting / Sketching. CCCB. Barcelona, Spain.
2005
Moving Pictures: Digital Paintings. The Dallas Center for Contemporary Art. Dallas, TX.
Generator.x. National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design. Oslo, Norway.
Ars Electronica Animation Festival 2005. Linz, Austria.
Thick Works. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, IL.
Abstraction Now in White Noise. Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Melbourne, Australia.
Generative X @ onedotzero. Institute for Contemporary Art. London, UK.
Rhizome ArtBase 101. New Museum of Contemporary Art. New York, NY.
Artware3. Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano. Lima, Peru.
Touch and Temperature. Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, TX.
2004
Algorithmic Revolution. ZKM. Karlsruhe, Germany.
Touch and Temperature. Bitforms. New York, NY.
This is Today. Triennale, Palazzo dell’Arte. Milan, Italy.
2003
Cluster. Mole Antonelliana. Turin, Italy. November 2003.
CODE. Ars Electronica. Linz, Austria.
Abstraction Now. Künstlerhaus Wien. Vienna, Austria.
2001
Bitforms Inaugural Group Show. bitforms gallery. New York, NY.
Animations. P.S. 1. Queens, NY.
Workspheres. MoMA. New York, NY.
2000
New York Digital Salon. New York, NY.
Projects from the ACG. Cooper Union. New York, NY.
Selected Online Generative Art Releases
There’s No Distance. fxhash. 14 December 2023. Series of 128.
923 Empty Rooms. Bright Moments and Art Blocks. 14 – 19 August 2023. Series of 923.
ATOM. Proof: Grails IV. 7 August 2023. Series of 38.
Pre-Process. Art Blocks Curated. 30 November 2022. Series of 120.
METASOTO. Feral File. 26 November 2022. Series of 64.
CENTURY 2052. Art Blocks. 20 October 2022. Series of 50.
Network C. Bright Moments Berlin Collection. 23 April 2022. Series of 100.
DAAI. Versum. 27 January – 28 August 2022. Series of 128. Created under the pseudonym Caesuras.]
Phototaxis. Art Blocks. 21 September 2021. Series of 1000.
CENTURY. Art Blocks Curated. 21 June 2021. Series of 1000.
CAAI. Hic et Nunc. 23 April – 7 May 2021. Series of 128. Created under the pseudonym Caesuras.
Selected Media
2023
Amy Whitaker and Nora Burnett Abrams. The Story of NFTs: Artists: Technology, and Democracy. Rizzoli Electra. 2023.
Christiane Paul. Digital Art (World of Art), Fourth Edition. Thames & Hudson. 2023.
Sander Lutz. “The Godfather of Generative Art Goes Global.” Scene. 10 August 2023.
Tina Rivers Ryan. “Binary Plastic Language.” Artforum International. Summer 2023.
2022
Brian Droitcour. “Creative Inputs.” Outland. 24 October 2022.
Domenico Quaranta. Surfing with Satoshi: Art, Blockchain and NFTs. Aksioma. 2022.
“Power 100.” ArtReview. 2022
2021
Brian Droitcour. “From Blockchain to Browser: Exhibiting NFTs, Part One.” ARTnews. 12 August 2021.
Jesse Damiani. Proof of Art: A short history of NFTs from the beginning of digital art to the metaverse. DISTANZ Verlag GmbH. 2021.
Nick Montfort. Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities, Second Edition. MIT Press. 2021.
Theadora Walsh. “Generating Community.” Art in America. 12 April 2021.
2020
Ben Vickers and K Allado-McDowell, Editors. Atlas of Anomalous AI. Ignota Press. 2020.
Chris Hales. “Weird and Wonderful: How Experimental Film Narratives Can Inform Interactive Digital Narratives.” Interactive Storytelling. Anne-Gwenn Bosser, David E. Millard, and Charlie Hargood, Editors. Springer. 2020. pp. 149–163.
Jason Bailey. “Doing Things with Computers.” Art in America. January 2020. Published online as “The Tools of Generative Art, from Flash to Neural Networks.” on 8 January 2020.
Jerome Neutres, Editor. Immaterial/Re-Material: A Brief History of Computing Art. UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Culture and Art Publishing House. 2020.
Winnie Soon and Geoff Cox. Aesthetic Programming: A Handbook of Software Studies. Open Humanities Press. 2020.
2019
Douglass Dodds. “Collecting, Documenting, and Exhibiting the Histories of Digital Art: A V&A Perspective.” Museums and Digital Culture. Tulsa Giannini and Jonathan P. Bowen, Editors. Springer. 2019. pp. 217–229.
Michael Conner, Aria Dean, Dragan Espenschied, Editors. The Art Happens Here: Net Art Anthology. Rhizome. 2019. pp 166–169.
Patrick Frank. Prebles’ Artforms, Twelfth Edition. Pearson Education, Inc. 2019.
2018
Frédéric Migayrou, Editor. Coder le monde: Mutations / Créations. Editions HYX and Centre Pompidou. 2018.
Brian Stone, Leah Wahlin. The Theory and Practice of Motion Design: Critical Perspectives and Professional Practice. Routledge. 2018.
2017
Aranda\Lasch. Trace Elements. Columbia University Press. 2017.
Frieder Nake and Susan Grabowski. “Think the Image, Don’t Make It! On Algorithmic Thinking, Art Education, and Re-coding.” Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts. Porto. Volume. 9, Issue 3. 2017. pp. 21–31.
Meredith Hoy. From Point to Pixel: A Genealogy of Digital Aesthetics. Dartmouth College Press. 2017.
Steve F. Anderson. Technologies of Vision: The War Between Data and Images. MIT Press. 2017.
2016
Miguel Carvalhais. Artificial Aesthetics: Creative Practices in Computational Art and Design. Universidade do Porto Edições. June 2016.
Nick Montfort. Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities. MIT Press. 2016.
2015
Carolina A. Miranda. “Datebook: Digital manipulations, abstracted canvases, sculptures from trash.” Los Angeles Times. 3 September 2015.
Claire Voon. “Code-Based Artworks that Reinvent Themselves Every Day.” Hyperallergic. 17 December 2015.
Laura Mallonee. “Commissioning a Portrait of the Digital Crowd.” Hyperallergic. 8 April 2015.
Mitchell Whitelaw. “System Stories and Model Worlds.” Systems. Edward A. Shanken, Editor. Whitechapel Gallery. MIT Press. March 2015.
2014
Beryl Graham. New Collecting: Exhibiting and Audiences After New Media. Ashgate Publishing Co. 2014
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Editor. Mapping It Out: An Alternative Atlas of Contemporary Cartographies. Thames & Hudson. 2014
Johanna Drucker. Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production. Harvard University Press. April 2014. pp. 49–50.
Karen Rosenberg. “Glimpses of the Past and a HighTech Future.” The New York Times. 3 April 2014.
2013
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Editor. Do It: The Compendium. Independent Curators International/D.A.P. 2013.
Mark Hansen. “Data-Driven Aesthetics.” The New York Times. 19 June 2013.
2011
Domenico Quaranta. In Your Computer. LINK Editions, Brescia 2011.
Tom Igoe. Making Things Talk, Second Edition. O’Reilly Media, 2011.
2009
Kostas Terzidis. Algorithms for Visual Design Using the Processing Language. Wiley, Indianapolis, 2009.
Wolf Lieser. Digital Art. h.f.ullmann, 2009.
2008
Lisa Delgado. “Process Makes Perfect.” Rhizome. 7 March 2008.
“Power 100: Most influential people in 2008 in the contemporary artworld.” ArtReview. 2008.
2007
Leggett, Mike. “Generative Systems and the Cinematic Spaces of Film and Installation Art.” Leonardo. Volume 40, Number 2. April 2007.
2002
“Casey Reas.” The Graphics Book. D&AD, London. 2002.