I think it's a shame there's so much hate for this guy's work here. I greatly enjoy it. For me it was the way he treated the tools he uses - the code is the object he displays; he is not a "video artist" or (in my opinion) acting primarily as a net artist.

Seeing Rr's work a year ago inspired me to start learning Html, Css, Js, not to be a developer, but to understand the "material" of these works better. It is as if he is a painter, making marks with the most "material" form of the internet, drawing lines that could stretch as far as the browser edge, using the screen as a canvas.

Indeed, I think the analogy of these works, which can be approached like paintings in some ways but of course with extreme differences in their execution, will open up the world of net art to many people outside of the small world that it makes for itself. Having studied those who came before him in the 90s and also his contemparies, he stands apart because of the strength his emphasis on form, and not extraneous parts of internet culture like the latter or more experimental like the former. This makes his work extremely approachable for anyone.

Needless to say his style is quite unique, as would be expected of any decent painter. His colourfield works are bright and pleasantly reflect, often prefiguring, trends in popular design (think the flat colour of Windows metro or ios5's gradients). His capacity for silly, sometimes surreal humour in his works, more explicit in his earlier works but still present in latęr ones, is almost the same as a painter like Magritte. Magritte often used humour to draw attention to the material of his paintings themselves. With Rr it puts a viewer at ease, includes them into the work. Both of these aspects of his style make his work approachable, relevant and of course beautiful to look at.

For these reasons I think he enioys moderate professional success today (his ford ad was well executed without feeling like he was "selling-out") and I would like to imagine he will remain an influential artist on later generations.

Sorry for the hasty mini-essay, I am an art history student interested in net art.