Rollin Leonard is an artist who works with water. To construct his portraits and sculptures, Leonard creates “water lenses” by manipulating water on glass to physically refract and distort photographic images of human faces, bodies, trees, microbes, diamonds, fur, stars, and other materials. He often uses himself as the subject in his work, playing roles for the camera. Lindsay Preston Zappas for KCRW Art Insider wrote: “Though self-portraiture is one of art history’s oldest genres, Leonard’s innovative techniques elevate the medium to new process-driven heights.”

What emerges are his original, hypnotic, and monstrous collectives or multiplicities that mirror the interconnectivity of the living world. Leonard first became known as part of the “Net-Art” movement in the early 2010s. His work is sometimes called “a simulation of a simulation” because it looks hyperreal but is created through working with analog materials. Each of Leonard’s creatures exist within the artist’s personal ecosystem, a kind of speculative fiction made up of animal-plant-rock hybrids that might emerge from the ruins of climate apocalypse.

Raised in Wisconsin, Leonard lives in Los Angeles. His work has been exhibited at The Photographer’s Gallery in London, Museum of the Moving Image NYC, biforms NYC, Transfer Gallery NYC, Postmasters Gallery in NYC, Haus Der Elektronischen Künste Basel, Carnegie Museum of Art, SFMoMA, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the CMCA Museum in Maine, the Whitney Museum in NYC, and elsewhere.