“There is something oddly tender about [Leonard’s] monstrous creatures. I believe this is partly a result of his unusual and intensive process. Although Leonard’s work often mimics digital effects, it is mostly made through analogue means such as painting real colors on faces and shooting through actual water drops. His work is, as artist and writer Claudia Hart once said, “a simulation of a simulation.” Surprisingly, at the other end of the simulation, instead of finding more of the machine, you find the human.”
— Kate Durbin for SPIKE Art Magazine - Tender and Monstrous: Rollin Leonard
“Though self-portraiture is one of art history’s oldest genres, Leonard’s innovative techniques elevate the medium to new process-driven heights.”
— Lindsay Preston Zappas for KCRW Art Insider
“The starting point for Rollin Leonard’s newest series was the all-too-familiar stock photos of dew drops clinging to surfaces—be it a flower, stem, or a spider web—and a desire to find a way to use the visual distortions they create. Once applied to imagery of the human body, Leonard’s main subject matter for the past several years, the reproduced drops are merged with flesh in an unsettling yet evocative way.”
— Alexandra Alexa for Artsy
“The photographic image, whether still or in motion, is a truly pliable medium for artist Rollin Leonard. Whether through digital manipulation, camera effects, or some combination thereof, in Leonard’s mind, photography can undergo nearly infinite distortion and re-imagining.”
— DJ Pangburn for VICE
“In Rollin’s...hilarious and terrifying work, he conjoin(s) frantically flailing digitized parts of his body into animated mutants, with butt-cheeky polymeliac can-can lines and gigantic waving fingers sprouting out of tiny heads.”
— Marina Galperina, managing editor of ANIMAL New York
“Leonard plays off our innate empathy for and recognition of the body, allowing us to find something ‘human’ even in its most scrambled articulations.”
— Seth Watter from Art and Mutilation: Some Thoughts on the Work of Rollin Leonard
“Contrary to what the brain and eyes might conspire to think, these images were made with virtually no digital manipulation in the traditional sense of the practice—no pixilating filters, no liquefy tool, and no Photoshopped distortion is responsible for creating the impression of a third dimension.”
— Eugene Reznik for Pop Photo - The Third Dimension: Rollin Leonard’s Digital Photography Physical and In-Camera Interventions Simulate Digital Filters And Glitches
“Merging corporate aesthetics with organic metaphor, [Leonard’s pieces are] a riff on the finance term “liquidity,” as well as the under-financed creative labor reserves of the thirst economy.”