#orfi

“Endless Horizon” graced the pages of zingmagazine #12 in the Summer/Fall of 1999. The images exude a sort of organized chaos, pixelated and vibrantly colorful in the foreground, set against dark, muted tones and the looming silhouette of the Manhattan skyline. Did the work presage something greater that was looming ahead of America and the world? Did the artists understand something was coming to an end, that a new era would soon be upon us? In retrospect, knowing full well that hindsight is 20-20, it’s hard not to suspect that ORFI knew something that the rest of us didn’t.

If this all sounds a little pie-in-the-sky, bear with me for a moment. When I was a child in the ‘90s, I recall a general sense of calm and wellbeing that pervaded most aspects of life. Things seemed more prosperous and trouble always felt more distant. Wars happened in other places and there wasn’t much time to worry because something called the “Internet” was happening. If it wasn’t going to make you rich, it was at least going to entertain the hell out of you around the clock.

But the 2000s marked a distinct departure from that feeling. The new millennium opened with an economic recession and September 11 marked the beginning of a pronounced, albeit amorphous sense that the world was in fact a chaotic, dangerous place. Bad things did happen and it seemed that going forward, being a good person and doing the right thing would have less and less to do with one’s lot in life.

That sense of transition from one frame of mind to the next came rushing back when I flipped the pages of “Endless Horizon” for the first time. For one thing, ORFI hit the nail squarely on the head with that title of this project. If we now understand digital technology to be essentially limitless in potential, the work hints at this vastness, taking a look at what was available and what was coming and trying to make sense of how the digital space can influence artistic expression. The whole project feels almost looks like an ad campaign for Photoshop that Adobe ended up scrapping midway through the process; not quite executed correctly, but an accurate depiction of what the software could do nonetheless. Many of the images are pixelated, rough hewn into various geometric patterns. They take advantage of a dynamic color palette to show everyone just how much potential these new technologies hold. They are inherently exploratory, with a lot to say about composition and form in the coming digital age.

ORFI went on hiatus in 2002, returning in 2010 with works focused on, in their own words, “drawings, paintings, graphics, photography and recently clothing for a project with VFILES named Blooming Whispers.” To be honest, I’m impressed that they made it that far into the new millennium before they needed a break, and impressed more so that they were able to come back so soon. If they didn’t know something that the rest of us did not, they certainly sensed that things were about to change. Who knows what staring into the heart of those changes would have done to lesser artists or humans, but I’m grateful that ORFI was willing to take a look into the abyss.