"Today’s once rebellious talents often seem to be wandering lost in the constellation of celebrity where they soon settle into complacency," the New York Times said recently of the contemporary art scene. The statement is daunting to say the least. But Bard College juniors Paris Ionescu, Jonny Rooms and Theo Wenner are looking to change all that via their social networking site Selfportrait.net.

Created for artists who otherwise wouldn’t have a venue to showcase their work in an “entirely democratic way” (as the founding trio has said of the site’s intentions), Selfportrait.net took nearly a year to build. “Freshman-year classes were basically an aside to the site,” says Rooms, who's also a rapper. Three years later the site has 11,000 members featuring their works in film/video, writing, studio arts, performance and computer arts, fashion, architecture and design. “The art world functions as a snooty social network. We’re making a comment about that,” says Ionescu.

But, that’s not to say Selfportrait.net doesn’t have a hierarchy of its own. Specifically, the site has a top-ten rank system based entirely on hits – thus a rotating group of highlighted artists are allotted homepage face time accordingly. Unlike other social networking sites, where popularity and hits are based solely on personality profiles, Selfportrait.net’s focus is on one’s art.

“This new generation of artists in high school and college right now are growing up with a very different conception of audience, performance and all the subtleties between the two. So, now all these young artists are flocking the sites like Selfportrait.net, which is great. We’re at the point where people are comfortable showing their work online and even putting a price tag on it. That work is done, that’s easy. Our job now is to make the collectors feel comfortable buying it,” says Rooms.

Having already begun a career shooting editorial photos, and, most recently, an advertisement for Zac Posen, co-founder Theo Wenner has used the site as a portfolio for his photography. Of his experience so far he says, “I’ve been offered jobs through the site that I’m not interested in, but it’s a great platform to display photography – more than posting a PDF file of your essay.”

While a bikini-clad girl currently hold the number one spot on the site's top ten, Selfportrait.net's founders maintain it's not your average networking site. Of a recent site sponsored event, Rooms remembers: "People would strike up conversation with people they recognized from Selfportrait, which was just awkward."

The plan now is to take the site to the next level once its three founders have graduated. “It needs constant attention. It’s not like a book. And, you have to expand number-wise. That’s the backbone of any social network. The more numbers you have, the more art you are going to sell and the more critique you're going to have,” says Wenner. “There is a disconnect between the artists with the talent, and the collectors with the cash,” adds Rooms. “Our mission is to provide talented artists with an opportunity to have their work seen by collectors.”

~Sara Costello


Fifth photo, Vietnam on Self Portrait
Sixth photo, The Blow on Self Portrait
Seventh photo, Josephine on Self Portrait
Eighth photo, The So So Glows on Self Portrait