Jennifer Bornstein
Seattle-born artist Jennifer Bornstein creates work that incorporates mimesis into performance, video, unique printing processes, and installation—considering ways in which identity might be sculpted. Her earliest video and photographic works in the 1990s revolve around the idea that “nothing in our culture is free of systematic consumption” and affirm the ways in which one might infiltrate the arena of commerce. Her style is anti-aesthetic and utilizes impersonation as a way to gauge people’s affinity and relationships to one another. She once posed as a fake collector of fast food containers and took photos with teenagers at a basketball court near her home in New York, finding that identity is conditional—it is a process of “liv[ing] in accommodation to and approximation of others.” Bornstein’s inventive “slow art” prints are created using various original techniques, and juxtapose history and identity. They include characters such as Buster Keaton or Margaret Mead, and utilize the manual process to redefine the written past and assign it a conceptual prominence. Throughout her work, the artist emphasizes the social fluidity of concepts that appear rigidly structured, ranging from identity to history.
Bornstein has exhibited at the Stedilijk Museum, Amsterdam, Fargfabriken Center for Contemporary Art, Stockholm, Museum of …
Seattle-born artist Jennifer Bornstein creates work that incorporates mimesis into performance, video, unique printing processes, and installation—considering ways in which identity might be sculpted. Her earliest video and photographic works in the 1990s revolve around the idea that “nothing in our culture is free of systematic consumption” and affirm the ways in which one might infiltrate the arena of commerce. Her style is anti-aesthetic and utilizes impersonation as a way to gauge people’s affinity and relationships to one another. She once posed as a fake collector of fast food containers and took photos with teenagers at a basketball court near her home in New York, finding that identity is conditional—it is a process of “liv[ing] in accommodation to and approximation of others.” Bornstein’s inventive “slow art” prints are created using various original techniques, and juxtapose history and identity. They include characters such as Buster Keaton or Margaret Mead, and utilize the manual process to redefine the written past and assign it a conceptual prominence. Throughout her work, the artist emphasizes the social fluidity of concepts that appear rigidly structured, ranging from identity to history.
Bornstein has exhibited at the Stedilijk Museum, Amsterdam, Fargfabriken Center for Contemporary Art, Stockholm, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Missouri, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge, Massachusetts, San Francisco MoMA, California, Print Center, Philadelphia, and CCA Watts Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, among many others. She participated in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, New York, the 2nd Torino Triennial in 2008, the 2nd Moscow Biennale in 2007, and Greater New York in 2000 at MoMA PS 1. Bernstein has been honored extensively, awarded a fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2014, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award in 2008, and an Elizabeth Foundation Studio Grant, among others.
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Nantes, France
New School University, New York, New York
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California
Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California
Grunwald Center, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
greengassi, London
Gavin Brown Enterprises, New York