Lew Baldwin is an artist and filmmaker working across video installation, film, painting, internet-based work, and music. His work explores the space between abstraction, participation, and the subconscious — drawing from vernacular internet imagery, fantasy, and the systems we use to consume everyday information. He describes himself less as an artist than a practicing observer.

Baldwin tends to build vessels rather than statements: structures other people complete. A wall in a museum or gallery that anyone in the world could post to, leaving the people in the room subject to whatever arrived: poetry, filth, junk text, or genuine insight — years before a social platform made that condition ordinary. A browser stripped of its content. The minimalism is structural rather than stylistic — the container has to be emptied before anyone can fill it. He launched his first website, redsmoke.com, in 1995 as a vehicle for a fictitious rock band; it quickly evolved, in his words, into a depository for the subconscious. His return to painting in 2019 draws on that early digital work — gifs, fantasy, and the imagery of the early web, recirculated in another form.

An early pioneer of digital art, Baldwin had redsmoke.com selected for the Whitney Biennial in 2000. In 2001 he created Milk Milk Lemonade for Bitstreams, the first all-digital exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. It was later installed in Venezuela shortly after 9/11. In 2002 he developed goodworld.ws for the Whitney, reducing websites to abstract color blocks in response to the commercialization of the internet.

His film work includes the in-camera visual sequences for November, made with glass, water, and ink; the film won the Cinematography Award at Sundance in 2004. He also composed its soundtrack. He directed the short film Abraded, featured at the Woodstock Film Festival in 2010. He was also the editor on Francesco Vezzoli’s The Return of Bruce Nauman's Bouncing Balls in 2006. His work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum, the Pasadena Armory for the Arts, the Art Association in Jackson Hole, and Sundance, as well as in Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico, Italy, and Japan, and has appeared in ID Magazine, Wallpaper, and USA Today.

Baldwin moved to Chicago from Texas to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His interest in narrative started there, working on Hollywood feature films including A League of Their Own, Dennis the Menace, and Home Alone 2. He currently lives and works in New York City.

(scroll for CV)

lewbaldwin.com
@afantasticplace
@lewbaldwin


Select Group Exhibitions

2026 Press Release soon...!
2023 Red Hook Open Studios, Feinberg Studio, Brooklyn, NY, paintings and video
2013 Smoke Grass, part of Psychic TV: Dreams Less Sweet, The Andy Warhol Museum, Philadelphia, PA, video
2012 Breath3, Plink Flojd at NOVA®, São Paulo, Brazil, video exhibit
2010 Araded, Woodstock Film Festival, Official Selection, short film
2009 Untitled, Cube Considered, Monkeytown Space, Brooklyn, NY, video
2005 Goodworld, Rhizome Artbase 101, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, website
2004 Not To Worry, Club Canyon, Group Show at Harmony Gallery, Los Angeles, prints
2004 Divine Nature (duplex), Art In Motion V; SYZYGY, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA, two screen video installation
2003 GoodWorld, prints and computer, Bank Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2002 MilkMilkLemonade, website, SHIFT JAPAN, online clothing project
2002 GoodWorld, Whitney Artport, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
2002 Warriors by Michel Garneau, The Culture Project, New York, video installation for off-Broadway play
2002 Red + Red, Den Furniture Gallery, San Francisco, CA, one screen video installation
2002 Heroes and Villains, New Frontiers, The Art Association, Jackson Hole, WY, video installation
2001 Milk Milk Lemonade, Bitstreams, Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, video installation
2001 Milk Milk Lemonade, Dumbo Festival, Mastel + Mastel Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, video installation
2001 Milk Milk Lemonade, X Course, Fundacion Polar, Caracas, Venezuala, video installation
2000 Redsmoke, Whitney Biennial 2000, Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, video installation
2000 Redsmoke, Am Ort - Andernorts, Kuenstlerbund, Berlin - www.kuenstlerbund.de, video installation
2000 Redsmoke, FIB, Benicassim Music Festival, Benicassim, Spain, video installation
2000 Redsmoke, F.I.L.E., Festival International de Linguagem Electronica, Sao Paula, Brazil
2000 Redsmoke, IMPAKT Electronic Arts Festival, Utrecht, Netherlands - www.impakt.nl, video installation
2000 Redsmoke, Net Effects, Kunstvlaai 4, Amsterdam, Netherlands - www.pavu.com/netaffects, video installation
2000 Augmented Groove, SIGGRAPH 2000, collaboration with ATR, MIC labs Japan
1999 Redsmoke, Window Into Hell, Robert Berman Gallery / d5 projects, Santa Monica, CA, video installation