Jennifer Steinkamp
Encyclopedia
Jennifer Steinkamp is an American
installation artist who works with video and new media in order to explore ideas about architectural space, motion, and perception.
Born in Denver, Colorado
in 1958, Steinkamp is the eldest of five children, three girls and two boys. Her family lived in a number of areas before settling in Edina, Minnesota
. In 1979, Steinkamp moved to Los Angeles to attend the California Institute of the Arts
, studying experimental animation. She later went to Art Center College of Design
in Pasadena
, studying with Mike Kelley
, Gene Youngblood
, and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe
. In 1989, Steinkamp returned to Art Center, completing her MFA in Fine Arts in 1991. She is currently a professor in the department of Design | Media Arts at UCLA.
Steinkamp uses digital projection to transform architectural space, providing the viewer with a synaesthetic experience, often working in collaboration with musicians Andrew Bucksbarg and Jimmy Johnson to integrate sound into her work. While her career began with brightly colored abstract projections, since 2003 she has increasingly incorporated nature-based imagery into her work — gnarled trees that twist, turn, and change seasons; rooms filled with undulating strands of flowers. In doing so she has brought digital art
into the mainstream of contemporary art. Her use of vernacular imagery and embrace of beauty result in mesmerizing environments that reference the sublime, as did the Hudson River School
painters. Like her art historical precedents, Steinkamp conveys the magnitude and power of nature—a nature that is not always benign. Premature, a series first displayed in 2010, shifts the focus of Steinkamp's subject to life and death. She explores this topic with projections of slithering veins and arteries that evoke the eerie inspiration of her work. Her work has the power to communicate to a broader public, to “convert” a more traditional art audience, familiar with the use of computer graphics for video games but unaware of other creative applications.
Steinkamp has exhibited her work internationally in a variety of venues and contexts, but her work is still difficult to categorize. She is often described as a video art
ist although her work is not photo or video-based; her recent inclusion in the California Video exhibition at the Getty Museum suggests that her connection to the genre is unlikely to change. Interestingly, the media art world has never embraced Steinkamp as one of their own, since her work is not technically interactive and she uses the computer not as a tool to comment on technology, but rather one to create imagery.
In 2008, Steinkamp was selected as the United States representative in the 11th International Cairo Biennale. For Valentino's 2010 Spring/Summer couture show featured projections of Steinkamp's trees against the walls of the runway. In 2011 Jennifer Steinkamp will exhibit in Prospect. 2 New Orleans, the second biennial of Prospect New Orleans
curated by Dan Cameron
.
Her work is in the permanent public collections of: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art
; The Denver Art Museum
; The San Jose Museum of Art
; Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; Staples Center
; Henry Art Gallery
, Seattle; Albright-Knox Art Gallery
, Buffalo; The Fremont Street Experience
, Las Vegas; The Experience Music Project
, Seattle; The Corcoran Gallery of Art
, Washington DC; The W5 Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Florida; MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Leon, Spain; Istanbul Modern
, Istanbul, Turkey; Progressive Corporation, Cleveland, Ohio; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas; Martin Margulies Collection, Coconut Grove, Florida; Autostadt Collection, Wolfsburg, Germany; Phoenix Art Museum
, Phoenix, Arizona; Hammer Museum
, Los Angeles, California; Towada Center, Towada, Japan;
Western Bridge, Seattle, Washington; Victory Park
, Dallas Texas; CAC Museum of Malaga, Malaga, Spain; Vero Beach Museum of Art
, Vero Beach, Florida; The West Collection, Pennsylvania; Weatherspoon Art Museum, North Carolina; and the 21c Museum, Louisville, Kentucky.
Steinkamp is represented by ACME in Los Angeles, greengrassi in London and Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
installation artist who works with video and new media in order to explore ideas about architectural space, motion, and perception.
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
in 1958, Steinkamp is the eldest of five children, three girls and two boys. Her family lived in a number of areas before settling in Edina, Minnesota
Edina, Minnesota
Edina is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and a first-ring suburb situated immediately southwest of Minneapolis. Edina began as a small farming and milling community in the 1860s. The population was 47,941 at the 2010 census.-Geography:...
. In 1979, Steinkamp moved to Los Angeles to attend the California Institute of the Arts
California Institute of the Arts
The California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia, in Los Angeles County, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the...
, studying experimental animation. She later went to Art Center College of Design
Art Center College of Design
Art Center College of Design is a private college located in Pasadena, California, and was cited by BusinessWeek as one of the 60 best design schools in the world. The college’s industrial design program is consistently ranked number one by both DesignIntelligence and U.S...
in Pasadena
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
, studying with Mike Kelley
Mike Kelley
Mike Kelley is a contemporary American artist. Kelley's work involves found objects, textile banners, drawings, assemblage, collage, performance and video. He often works collaboratively and has done projects with artists Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler and John Miller...
, Gene Youngblood
Gene Youngblood
Gene Youngblood is a theorist of media arts and politics, and a respected scholar in the history and theory of alternative cinemas. His Expanded Cinema , the first book to consider video as an art form, was influential in establishing the field of media arts as a recognized artistic and scholarly...
, and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe is a British-born, Los Angeles-based New Abstractionist painter, art critic, theorist, and educator. His work has been exhibited at the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, Buffalo, NY; The Getty, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary...
. In 1989, Steinkamp returned to Art Center, completing her MFA in Fine Arts in 1991. She is currently a professor in the department of Design | Media Arts at UCLA.
Steinkamp uses digital projection to transform architectural space, providing the viewer with a synaesthetic experience, often working in collaboration with musicians Andrew Bucksbarg and Jimmy Johnson to integrate sound into her work. While her career began with brightly colored abstract projections, since 2003 she has increasingly incorporated nature-based imagery into her work — gnarled trees that twist, turn, and change seasons; rooms filled with undulating strands of flowers. In doing so she has brought digital art
Digital art
Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process...
into the mainstream of contemporary art. Her use of vernacular imagery and embrace of beauty result in mesmerizing environments that reference the sublime, as did the Hudson River School
Hudson River school
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism...
painters. Like her art historical precedents, Steinkamp conveys the magnitude and power of nature—a nature that is not always benign. Premature, a series first displayed in 2010, shifts the focus of Steinkamp's subject to life and death. She explores this topic with projections of slithering veins and arteries that evoke the eerie inspiration of her work. Her work has the power to communicate to a broader public, to “convert” a more traditional art audience, familiar with the use of computer graphics for video games but unaware of other creative applications.
Steinkamp has exhibited her work internationally in a variety of venues and contexts, but her work is still difficult to categorize. She is often described as a video art
Video art
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
ist although her work is not photo or video-based; her recent inclusion in the California Video exhibition at the Getty Museum suggests that her connection to the genre is unlikely to change. Interestingly, the media art world has never embraced Steinkamp as one of their own, since her work is not technically interactive and she uses the computer not as a tool to comment on technology, but rather one to create imagery.
In 2008, Steinkamp was selected as the United States representative in the 11th International Cairo Biennale. For Valentino's 2010 Spring/Summer couture show featured projections of Steinkamp's trees against the walls of the runway. In 2011 Jennifer Steinkamp will exhibit in Prospect. 2 New Orleans, the second biennial of Prospect New Orleans
Prospect New Orleans
Prospect New Orleans is a multi-venue contemporary art event in New Orleans."Prospect.1 New Orleans" ran from November 2008 to January 2009. Conceived in the tradition of the great international biennials, such as the Venice Biennale, São Paulo Biennial, Istanbul Biennial, it showcased new artistic...
curated by Dan Cameron
Dan Cameron
Dan Cameron is an American art curator based in New York City and New Orleans.Cameron's early years were spent in Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky and in Hudson Falls, NY. He attended Hudson Falls Public Schools , Syracuse University and Bennington College , where he earned a BA in 1979...
.
Her work is in the permanent public collections of: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
; The Denver Art Museum
Denver Art Museum
The Denver Art Museum is an art museum in Denver, Colorado located in Denver's Civic Center.It is known for its collection of American Indian art,and has a comprehensive collection numbering more than 68,000 works from across the world....
; The San Jose Museum of Art
San Jose Museum of Art
The San Jose Museum of Art is an art museum in Downtown San Jose, California, USA. Founded in 1969, the museum hosts a large permanent collection emphasizing West Coast artists of the 20th- and 21st-century. It is located next to the Circle of Palms Plaza and Plaza de César Chávez...
; Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; Staples Center
Staples Center
Staples Center is a multi-purpose sports arena in Downtown Los Angeles. Adjacent to the L.A. Live development, it is located next to the Los Angeles Convention Center complex along Figueroa Street. Opening on October 17, 1999, it is one of the major sporting facilities in the Greater Los Angeles...
; Henry Art Gallery
Henry Art Gallery
The Henry Art Gallery is the art museum of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, USA. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the University District, it was founded in 1927 and was the first public art museum in the state of Washington. The...
, Seattle; Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. The gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is located directly across the street from Buffalo State College.-History:...
, Buffalo; The Fremont Street Experience
Fremont Street Experience
The Fremont Street Experience is a pedestrian mall and attraction in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. The FSE occupies the westernmost 5 blocks of Fremont Street, including the area known for years as "Glitter Gulch," and portions of some other adjacent streets.The attraction is a barrel vault canopy,...
, Las Vegas; The Experience Music Project
Experience Music Project
The EMP Museum is a museum dedicated to the history and exploration of both popular music and science fiction located in Seattle, Washington...
, Seattle; The Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...
, Washington DC; The W5 Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Florida; MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Leon, Spain; Istanbul Modern
Istanbul Modern
The Istanbul Modern Art Museum, aka Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, is a museum of contemporary art in the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul, Turkey, inaugurated on December 11, 2004, prominently featuring the work of Turkish artists...
, Istanbul, Turkey; Progressive Corporation, Cleveland, Ohio; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas; Martin Margulies Collection, Coconut Grove, Florida; Autostadt Collection, Wolfsburg, Germany; Phoenix Art Museum
Phoenix art museum
The Phoenix Art Museum is the Southwest United States' largest art museum for visual art. Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the museum is . It displays international exhibitions alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,000 works of American, Asian, European, Latin American, Western...
, Phoenix, Arizona; Hammer Museum
Hammer Museum
The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center, or the Hammer Museum as it is more commonly known, is an art museum in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California...
, Los Angeles, California; Towada Center, Towada, Japan;
Western Bridge, Seattle, Washington; Victory Park
Victory Park
Victory Park is a master planned development northwest of downtown Dallas, Texas and north of Spur 366 . It is along Interstate 35E, part of the Stemmons Corridor and Uptown....
, Dallas Texas; CAC Museum of Malaga, Malaga, Spain; Vero Beach Museum of Art
Vero Beach Museum of Art
The Vero Beach Museum of Art is located at 3001 River Park Drive, Vero Beach, Florida. It houses regional, state and national art exhibits and includes a sculpture garden. The Vero Beach Museum of Art is the principal cultural arts facility of its kind on Florida’s Treasure Coast...
, Vero Beach, Florida; The West Collection, Pennsylvania; Weatherspoon Art Museum, North Carolina; and the 21c Museum, Louisville, Kentucky.
Steinkamp is represented by ACME in Los Angeles, greengrassi in London and Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York.
Further reading
- JoAnne Northrup. Jennifer Steinkamp Prestel; 2006. ISBN 3791335928.
- Kimberli Meyer and Nizan Shaked. Jennifer Steinkamp: United States Presentation 11th International Cairo Biennale MAK Center for Art and Architecture; 2008. ISBN 0977455815.
- Denise Markonish. Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape The MIT Press; 2008. ISBN 0262633663.
- Glenn Phillips. California Video: Artists and Histories Getty Publications; 2008. ISBN 0892369221.
- Mark Getlein. Living with Art McGraw-Hill Higher Education; 2007. ISBN 0073190764.
- John Huston. OPTIC NERVE: Perceptual Abstraction of the 1960s Columbus Museum of Art; 2007. ISBN 1858943892.
- Gail Swanlund. Jennifer Steinkamp Soledad Lorenzo Gallery; 2006.
- Kerry Brougher, Jeremy Strick, Ari Weisman, Judith Zilczer. Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art Since 1900 Thames & Hudson; 2005. ISBN 0500512175.
- Marilyn Stockstad. Art History 2nd edition, Prentice Hall; 2005. ISBN 013145529X.
- Dave Hickey. Beau Monde: Toward a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism SITE Santa Fe; 2002.
- Rochelle Steiner. Wonderland Saint Louis Art Museum; 2000.
- Peter Lunenfeld. Snap to Grid: A User's Guide to Digital Arts, Media, and Culture The MIT Press; 2000. ISBN 0262621584.