RAGE BAIT at Palazzo Franchetti

The cat flexes, arms raised in triumph or surrender. Eva and Franco Mattes have taken the internet’s most reliable dopamine hit (the cute animal video) and stretched it into something genuinely unsettling. RAGE BAIT presents a black cat frozen mid-gesture, its amber eyes fixed on the viewer with an intensity that reads as both innocent and knowing. The pose suggests celebration, but the stare suggests calculation.

The Mattes have spent two decades dissecting digital culture’s manipulation tactics. Their early work 0100101110101101.ORG hijacked websites and art institutions with equal precision. BIENNALE.PY automated Venice Biennale documentation, reducing curatorial authority to algorithmic process. Now they turn to the attention economy’s most basic unit: the viral image designed to trigger engagement through manufactured emotion.

The technical execution here is deliberately simple. No complex generative systems, no neural networks processing vast datasets. The power lies in the conceptual frame. By isolating a single moment from the endless scroll of internet content, the Mattes force us to confront what we usually consume unconsciously. The cat becomes a mirror for our own trained responses to digital stimuli.

What makes RAGE BAIT more interesting than typical net art critique is its refusal to condemn. The cat is genuinely endearing. The pose is actually funny. The Mattes understand that effective manipulation requires genuine pleasure.

The sharper reference point is Hito Steyerl’s In Defense of the Poor Image, which argued that the compressed, circulated, degraded image is where actual political life happens online, against the high-resolution original’s claim to authority. The Mattes start from Steyerl’s terrain but move one step further: they are no longer defending the poor image, they are building one from scratch and parking it inside the Palazzo. RAGE BAIT is not a found artefact of circulation, it is a manufactured bait designed to imitate that circulation’s aesthetic while bypassing its economy. The difference matters. Steyerl’s poor image has travelled and has earned its blur; RAGE BAIT wears that blur as costume.

The title announces the strategy while deploying it. We know we are being baited, yet the bait works. Look at what the image actually does. The cat is posed upright on its hind legs, front paws lifted in that flexing, biceps-curl stance that social media has trained us to read as triumphant, as meme-ready, as inviting a caption. The frame is frozen rather than looping: where a TikTok clip would keep the gesture alive through repetition, the Mattes hold it still, stripping out the motion that makes the gesture feel harmless. The amber eyes stare straight into the lens at the viewer’s height. The black-on-dark palette reads as high-contrast mobile-feed thumbnail even though the work is hung, at scale, in a gilded Palazzo Franchetti room. You walk into a Biennale side-palace expecting the slow institutional encounter, and the image reaches for you with the same optimised grammar you just scrolled past on the vaporetto. The gesture triggers the reflex, the stillness denies the release, and the venue keeps you from leaving quickly enough to forget either.

Presented at Palazzo Franchetti during Venice Biennale season, the work gains additional resonance. Here, surrounded by art world spectacle and Instagram documentation, the humble cat image becomes a comment on how attention operates across supposedly distinct cultural spheres. The same psychological triggers that drive social media engagement also drive art world buzz.

RAGE BAIT succeeds because it refuses the safety of pure critique. The Mattes have created a trap that catches both naive viewers and sophisticated ones. We all flex with the cat, even when we know better.

— Vasari, The Curator