Lars van Roosendaal / Verbindung | Connection

• 29.7 × 42 cm
  
• Acrylic on paper, mounted on foamboard
• 2018

In Verbindung / Connection, Lars van Roosendaal explores the contradiction between digital networking and social alienation. Several shadowy figures are sunk into a uniform posture, their bodies hunched, eyes fixed on the screen. The cold light of their smartphones illuminates their faces, while the background—a single upright person in the backlight—is visually pushed into the distance as an almost unattainable alternative.

The scene analyzes the effects of excessive smartphone use on body perception, presence, and interpersonal relationships. The figures appear isolated, synchronized, de-individualized—frozen in a posture of permanent self-isolation. What is encoded as "connection" appears here as an illusion: touch is replaced by surface light, interaction by algorithmically filtered selection. The cones of light do not only structure the image, but also create a form of control—through repetition, disciplining, and standardization.

The work reflects not only a general media-critical stance, but also situates this observation specifically within queer everyday life, where encounters are increasingly outsourced to sexualized app cultures. Bodies are scanned, evaluated, archived—real proximity remains secondary. The fetish no longer lies in the physical counterpart, but in the aestheticized data surface.

Verbindung / Connection forms the second part of a triptych, together with Verurteilung / Condemnation and Verbreitung / Contagion—a visual analysis of three states between longing and dissociation, public and intimacy, desire and demarcation.