Created in 2015, Jennifer Steinkamp’s newest work features flowering plants animated inside a cubic framework that utilizes the outer edge of the video as a container, mimicking the boundaries of a garden. Flowers are blown by an unseen force, as plants collide both with each other and the edges of the frame, breaking apart into seeds, twigs, leaves, and petals. The animations loop forward and back—transitioning between breaking apart and coming back together— eliminating any notion of narrative, as is characteristic in Steinkamp’s work.
Jennifer Steinkamp (b. 1958, Denver, Colorado) employs computer animation and new media to create projection installations in order to explore ideas about architectural space, motion, and phenomenological perception. Her digitally animated works make use of the interplay between actual space and illusionistic space, thus creating environments in which the roles of the viewing subjects and the art objects become blurred.
She completed her BFA and MFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California in 1989 and 1991 respectively, and also received an honorary PhD in 2011. Recently, Steinkamp created a large-scale animated projection on the facade of the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri providing new perspectives on the architectural structure. Other important recent exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California (2011); Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas (2012 and 2014); Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2012); and the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska (2013). In 2006, a retrospective of her work opened at the San Jose Museum of Contemporary Art and travelled to the Kemper Museum in Kansas City, Missouri and Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York. Also in 2006, the Denver Art Museum commissioned an installation by the artist for its new Daniel Libeskind-designed building. Steinkamp's work was also included in the 8th Istanbul Biennial (2003) and the 11th Cairo International Biennial (2008).
Steinkamp's work can be found in numerous public and private collections internationally, including The Chrysler Museum of Art, Virginia; Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malaga, Spain; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California; Istanbul Museum, Turkey; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Florida; and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles, California.