Jamie Isenstein: “ ”
Jamie Isenstein, Dancing Pop-up Fishing Sculpture, 2010. Fabric, newspaper, glue, paint, "Worm in a Can" gag dinner mints, human leg, fishnet tights, tap shoe, or velvet curtain, human arm or velvet curtain, "Wishing I Was Fishing" or"Gone Fishing" life preservers, pedestal. Dimensions variable. Photo: Sandy Carson.
Jamie Isenstein’s exhibition, “ ”, is comprised of three works, each questioning the traditional divisions between sculpture, performance, and video. Previously exhibited within a commercial gallery setting in New York, “ ” at the Visual Arts Center presents a new take on Isenstein’s installation that explores classic conventions of the gallery: the “abstract sculpture,” the “sign-in book,” and the “installation shot.”
Isenstein, known for blurring the lines between performance and sculpture, uses her own body as a ready-made object and will be in residence at the VAC for one week inhabiting her work, Dancing Pop-up Fishing Sculpture. This practice gives life to a normally static object as it layers and weaves formal and conceptual concerns of sculpture, performance, abstraction, and representation with a healthy dose of humor.
Organized by Xochi Solis, VAC Director of Events and Public Programming.
Bio
Jamie Isenstein was born in 1975 in Portland, Oregon and earned her BA from Reed College in 1998 and her MFA from Columbia University in 2004. She has exhibited in galleries and museums internationally, including GalerieGitiNourbakhsch, Berlin, and Meyer Riegger Gallery, Karlsruhe, and in the United States at the Hammer Museum and Michael Benevento Gallery, both in Los Angeles, Guild and Greyshkul, New York, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City. In 2009, she was included in Marina Abramović Presents at the Manchester International Festival, a festival of contemporary visual art and performance. Isenstein lives and works in Brooklyn and is currently represented by Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York.