Simon Denny

Simon Denny (b. 1982, Auckland, New Zealand)

Simon Denny makes exhibitions and projects that unpack the stories technologists tell us about the world using a variety of media including installation, sculpture, print, painting, video, and NFTs. Denny studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland and at the Städelschule, Frankfurt. He co-founded the artist mentoring program BPA//Berlin Program for Artists and serves as a Professor of Time-Based Media at the HFBK (University of Fine Arts) Hamburg. In 2023, the Kunstverein Hannover and the Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium exhibited his Metaverse Landscape paintings.

Denny represented New Zealand at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. Recent solo-exhibitions include: Petzel Gallery, New York (2024); Dunkunsthalle, New York (2024); Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland (2023); Altman Siegel, San Francisco (2023); Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee (2023); Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover (2023); Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, (2022); Gus Fisher Gallery at the University of Auckland, Auckland (2021); K21–Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2020); Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2018); OCAT, Shenzhen (2017); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2017); WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (2016); Serpentine Galleries, London (2015); MoMA PS1, Long Island City (2015); Portikus, Frankfurt (2014); mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2013); and the Kunstverein Munich, Munich (2013). Select group exhibitions include: The Warehouse, Dallas (2024); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2024); HEK (House of Electronic Arts), Basel (2023); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebaek (2023); The Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, Fort Worth (2023); Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo (2022); Kunsthalle Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2022); AKG Art Museum, Buffalo (2022); de Young Museum, San Francisco (2021); Athens Biennial, Athens (2021); and Mudam – The Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2021). Denny has also curated significant exhibitions about blockchain and art such as Proof of Stake at Kunstverein in Hamburg (2021) and Proof of Work at Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2018).

His works are included in the collections of the Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo, Norway; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland, New Zealand; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York; Danjuma Collection, Esher, England; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, Florida; Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee, Belgium; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland; Lewben Art Foundation, Vilius, Lithuania; Monash University, Melbourne, Australia; mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria; Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Rubell Museum, Miami, Florida; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Zabludowicz Collection, London, United Kingdom.

Simon Denny lives and works in Berlin.

“The question is what to do when you are living in symbiosis with machines that rely on pattern recognition that flattens meaning to the point where conspiracy theories are as strong as any other type of truth logic. One thing to take from the Futurists is that when you use the new without knowing what it is – as you have to do when you use the new – sometimes you don’t know what you’re getting and sometimes you don’t know who’s winning.”