If you're in LA, check out my new installation in the Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hill's bathroom. It should be up through September 2014. Gagosian Gallery / Beverly Hills 456 North Camden Dr Beverly Hills, CA 90210
"Way Out West" Public Art Billboard
I just created a billboard "Driptych" in San Francisco through The Art City Project. If you're in the city, go take a look. In San Francisco on 16th & South Van Ness.
July 7th - August 17th, 2014
Join us for the Way Out West launch event on July 17th!
The Art City Project proudly presents Way Out West, a celebration of the idea of California and its history as fertile ground for dreamers, pioneers, and counterculture. The exhibition reflects on the changing social landscape of the West Coast and explores the role of contemporary art in public spaces.
Way Out West revisits the California experience by transforming outdoor advertising into new space for art to live and breathe. The month-long installation — which spans billboards, transit shelters, bus takeovers, and other alternative space throughout San Francisco’s transitional inner Mission neighborhood — will feature art from contemporary artists with roots in California.
Brett Amory / Apex / Pakayla Rae Biehn / Anthony Discenza Double Zero (Annie Vought and Hannah Ireland) / Jeremy Fish Casey Gray / Desirée Holman / Chris Johanson / Jet Martinez Alicia McCarthy /Alia Penner / Andrew Schoultz Dave Schubert / Jen Stark / Zio Ziegler
and featuring artwork by Creativity Explored artists Andrew Li, John Patrick McKenzie, and Kate Thompson
Curated by Tova Lobatz and Jenny Sharaf
New York Times
The New York Times Magazine posted a photo of my new public art billboard on their blog. It is a full city project organized through Art City "Way Out West".
In San Francisco, where tensions between established artist communities and Silicon Valley continue to rise, Luke Groesbeck, a former tech worker and the founder of the fledgling public art organization Art City, wants to help his hometown reinvest in the former. “This is a city with a major arts and cultural legacy,” he says. “How do we honor that? Then an idea came up and I got fixated on it: What happens when you turn an entire city into a gallery? Is it possible?”
From now until Aug. 17, San Franciscans will get to find out. As part of Art City’s Way Out West project, Groesbeck, along with his crew of curators and organizers, worked with advertising companies and the local creative community to coordinate his organization’s pilot urban art takeover. Eleven billboards, four buses and three transit shelters in the Mission District are being resurfaced with works from 20 artists, many of whom have long-running involvements in San Francisco’s street art scene. These include the graffiti artist Apex, whose works live on building walls near major streets like Valencia, and members of the Mission School movement like Chris Johanson and Alicia McCarthy, who began collecting praise in the ’90s for their Sol LeWitt-like installations of busy, ribboned color.
The project isn’t just about the pieces themselves. It’s also about what they’ll replace: advertising. “Today, San Francisco has about 7,500 ad spaces, which reach tens of millions of people in a given month,” Groesbeck explains. “We’re doing this to illustrate a different possible future, where in each neighborhood we’re instead surrounded by art and contemporary art plays a major role in our lives.”
The subject of art versus commerce is a timely one in the Bay Area, especially in the once-gritty, rapidly gentrifying Mission. “Artists, musicians and other creatives that make San Francisco what it is are being pushed out,” says Brett Amory, an internationally exhibited artist and local resident who is also participating in the project. “The Mission District is one of the areas getting hit hardest by this change. It’s a very appropriate place to have art by local artists displayed, as a reminder of what the city is really made of.”
Groesbeck, for his part, thinks the project will help San Francisco remember its roots. “I think this is a way to do something positive,” he says, “and hopefully, give back to the city.”
Art Alliance: The Provocateurs
I'll be showing 2 new pieces in a group show in Chicago from July 31 - August 4, 2014. Art Alliance: The Provocateurs will be held at Block Thirty Seven, 109 N. Dearborn Street, in a 25,000 square foot space encompassing an entire city block in the heart of the Loop. More information at: http://www.artalliance.com/info/
Cosmographic / 34" x 37" x 4" / acid-free paper, holographic paper, glue, wood / 2014
Splatter / 60" x 48" x 1" / acrylic paint on MDF / 2014
Splatter (detail) / 60" x 48" x 1" / acrylic paint on MDF / 2014
"Dazed & Confused" at Eric Firestone Gallery
Two of my latest sculptures will be exhibited in a group show in East Hampton, NY at Eric Firestone Gallery
Dazed & Confused, Group Exhibition
May 24th-June 15th, 2014
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 24th, 2014 | 6-9 PM
Full Circle / 36" x 36" x 76" / Latex spray paint on PVC, monofilament / 2014Full Circle / 36" x 36" x 76" / Latex spray paint on PVC, monofilament / 2014
Glow / 63" x 40" x 4" / acid-free paper, holographic paper, glue, wood, acrylic paint / 2014
Ghosting Volume #8 - Film screening in Los Angeles
On Saturday March 29th, my animation "Believer" will be featured in a film screening in Los Angeles called Ghosting.tv. Feel free to come out and see some amazing short films and animations! Al Jarnow, Semiconductor, Jen Stark & Joe Merrell (in stereoscopic chromadepth!) And a special presentation of 16mm by: Lost and Found Film Club. More info at http://ghosting.tv
March 29th 8pm
Ghosting Volume #8 1205 N Main St Los Angeles CA
Ghosting is a monthly hang out for experimental animators and video artists.
Short screenings by a rotating group of artists will be featured each month. Come and hang out! Network with your peers OFFLINE in a chill environment lubricated by your favorite spirits. BYOB!!!!!!!!!!!!
Studio visit with Hi-Fructose
Jen Stark Lecture: Art, Science & the Cosmos
I'll recently did a lecture at SCI-Arc on January 15th in Los Angeles. I talked about my artwork and its relationship to universal shapes in nature and science. Jen Stark: Art, Science & the Cosmos Lecture at SCI-Arc: the Southern California Institute of Architecture Wednesday, January 15, 7 pm W.M. Keck Lecture Hall SCI-Arc / 960 East 3rd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013
See the full lecture HERE
New Scientist Magazine
My work was on the recent cover of New Scientist Magazine. "Why Space Has Exactly Three Dimensions"
photo by Harlan Erskine
New mural and hanging sculpture in Chicago
I was commissioned by The Arts Initiative (Primary Projects) to create a large mural on an escalator "Drippy", and an 8ft x 20ft hanging sculpture "Wormhole" in the new mall Fashion Outlets of Chicago. The Arts Initiative, a newly formed collective dedicated to placing highly interactive visual art in public venues, announced a lineup of more than 10 nationally and internationally recognized contemporary artists for its initial installation, which will be housed within the forthcoming Fashion Outlets of Chicago.
Artists Include:
Daniel Arsham, Bhakti Baxter, Jim Drain, Friends With You, Cody Hudson, Alvaro Ilizarbe, Andrew Nigon, Kenton Parker, Bert Rodriguez, Jen Stark & Austyn Weiner.
The brainchild of AWE Talisman Chairman Arthur Weiner, which is curated by acclaimed Miami-based collective Primary Projects, the installation will include work from the likes of artists Daniel Arsham, Jim Drain, Friends With You, Bert Rodriguez and Jen Stark, among others. This project represents the future of highly interactive visual art in public venues: artist-driven ideas actively integrated into the architectural framework and viewing space.
The artists chosen by The Arts Initiative will enrich and enliven the multi-level shopping center in a way that is sure to redefine public arts spaces for years to come.
Drippy-lores
Photo by Clayton Hauck
Drippy-02-lores
Photo by Clayton Hauck
foc_artsinitiative_I2A5155_small
Photo by Clayton Hauck
foc_artsinitiative_I2A5175_small
Photo by Clayton Hauck
Fashion Outlets of Chicago, located in Rosemont, IL, is developed, owned and operated by AWE Talisman and Macerich. The 530,000 square foot fully enclosed structure spans two floors and includes a diverse portfolio of more than 130 outlets. The Fashion Outlets of Chicago will open August 1, 2013.
Fashion Outlets Chicago 5220 Fashion Outlets Way, Rosemont, IL 60018
"Summer Reading" group show at The Hole Gallery
My work is included in a group show at The Hole Gallery in NYC. I hope you can make it out.
Tri Angular / 35" x 35" x 25" / acrylic paint on wood / 2010
SUMMER READING July 18 – August 24, 2013 OPENING: Thursday, July 18 from 6-9pm
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Airan Kang / Alexander Rodriguez / Andre Saraiva / Andrew Kuo / Brad Phillips / Brian Belott / Brian Dettmer / Clare Rojas / David Shrigley / Devin Troy Strother / Dustin Yellin / Gareth Long / Geoff McFetridge / Harland Miller / Hollie Chastain / Holton Rower / Jacqueline Rush Lee / Jen Mazza / Jen Stark / Jesse Edwards / John Copeland / Kembra Pfahler / Leo Fitzpatrick / Long Bin Chen / Matthew Higgs / Matthew Stone / Michael Dumontier / Miranda July /Neil Farber / Paul Bright / Peter Funch / Scott Reeder / Sean Landers / Shane Bradford / Simon Evans / Taylor McKimens / Toilet Paper / Troels Carlsen
The Hole is proud to present “Summer Reading”, a group exhibition and transformation of our Bowery galleries into a giant art book reading room. With works of painting, drawing, sculpture and photography, artists in this show explore the relationship of literature and print media to the realm of fine arts, or perhaps the slippages of meaning and experience between the act of reading and that of looking.
Please join us any lazy summer afternoon to come in to check out the exhibition and grab something off the shelves and sit in a big chair and peruse it. With over five thousand titles within reach on our shelves, including contributions from Printed Matter, D.A.P., powerHouse Books, PictureBox, Anteism and many of our gallery friends, this free reading room will contain a lot of new titles and rare old catalogues.
Our library furniture was generously provided by Bright Lyons in Brooklyn, run by Paul Bright whose contribution to the exhibition is an installation of his massive zine collection installed on the back wall of the gallery.
NOW Toronto Article
Into the vortex: Three-dimensional spirals inspire
By David Jager
Into the vortex: Three-dimensional spirals inspire by David Jager Los Angeles-based artist Jen Stark doesn’t hang her work in galleries; she creates inter-dimensional rifts in their walls. Occupying a wholly original territory between painting and sculpture, she literally builds her complex vortices into walls or pedestals, giving the impression that they’ve opened into rainbow hued wormholes. Behind each of these manifestations is a daunting degree of meticulous craftsmanship, handicraft and math. Stark’s three-dimensional spirals and eye-brain workouts are derived from a mix of sacred geometry and fractals painstakingly reconstructed by hand using brightly coloured paper, foam board and glue. It’s Stark’s patient commitment to detail that lends her works their hallucinatory vividness. The geometrically precise swirl of Vortextural is made all the more compelling by the ambiguous rainbow-hued shapes around its rim. She skirts the chaotic edge of her mathematically precise constructions in ways that make them more playful. And she’s not afraid to revel in the pure joy of colour running wild, as in Drippy, where it appears that a prismatic glob of colours has started to literally run down the wall from the gallery ceiling. Dimension makes its visual impact with more restraint and elegance. A series of concentric rings suspended by threads to form a receding tunnel floating in mid-air, it evokes the colour spectrum and its perceptual trickery. Circling around it, however, you’re surprised to discover that the far side has been rendered in black and white, a monochrome inversion of the same work. Pulsating, mathematically complex geometries bursting with colour are things we associate with waving glow sticks at 4 am. Stark gives these old psychedelic tropes a conceptual retrofit, infusing them with a clean, playful, contemporary edge.
ARTORONTO Interview
A new interview on my new show "Vortextural" at Cooper Cole Gallery. Written by Shellie Zhang. Enjoy!
Interview with Jen Stark (J.S) by Shellie Zhang (S.Z)
Recognized by their mesmerizing spirals, loud colours, and op-art attributes, Jen Stark’s paper sculptures draws inspiration from an array of natural phenomenons within mathematics, nature, and cosmic space. Her current solo exhibition at the COOPER COLE Gallery demonstrates a continuation of her studies in optical illusions, colour gradations, and paper’s transformative qualities. Through an amalgamation of the visual qualities found in mandalas, topography, botany, and light, Stark’s work seems to uncover the underlying pulse of the universe. By visually mimicking the elements of time, nature, and space, Stark’s sculptural works stand as a testament to unity and oneness within the world. The entrancing installations create an alluring atmosphere between the surreal, fantastical, and psychedelic, ultimately welcoming viewers escape into the technicoloured realm of Stark’s vivid imagination.
S.Z: Your intricate colour schemes have the ability to appear random and instinctual, while also giving the impression that each hue is meticulously planned out well in advance. In doing so, your work retains a highly psychedelic and hypnotic quality which delves into your audience’s consciousness. Can you talk about your processes with colour and how you managed to find a balance for your work to remain mathematic yet organic?
J.S: My process with color comes from the interest of color in nature and how color is such an attention-grabber….to caution poison in mushrooms, or to reveal a delicious fruit that will spread it’s seed. I love how certain colors look next to each other and attract the viewer’s attention. The exact color schemes are not typically planned out. I usually spontaneously pick colors that I think will look great next to each other and build from there. They balance of mathematics and organic shapes emulates patterns in nature. I love the similarity between microscopic and macroscopic shapes and how even though they are extremely different in size, there is still an underlying shape that seems to construct itself throughout.
S.Z: Although you use 2-dimentional materials, your work reaches a sculptural status which allows it to leap off its surfaces and planes to distort perception. Cosmic Complex seems to rise from the gallery floors and Vortextural is a fantastic title that encapsulates your ability to immerse viewers in a kaleidoscopic dream. You’ve also done larger scale projects such as your mural for the Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art. Do you prefer working on large surrealistic interventions or more intimate wormholes?
J.S: I prefer showing my artwork however I can, although I’m a bit more drawn to the sculptures/wormholes in the walls. They just seem to pull the viewer in and leave them mystified. I love them all though.
S.Z: Many of the works in this exhibition possess a pulse-like vibration that leaves viewers in a trance. In particular, Dimension had me captivated for what felt like hours. I’ve read that you are very much inspired by the patterns within nature. Could you elaborate on how repetition and movement play a part in your creative and thinking processes?
J.S: Yes. I have a love for all kinds of optical illusions and things that seem to distort reality in a subtle way. When viewing “Dimension” from one angle, you see a rainbow gradient but once the viewer moves around it, the design suddenly shifts, and they’re looking at an optical black and white pattern. Repetition and movement play a huge role in my creative process. The repetition is similar to how the layers of a plant unfurl and reveal the future layers inside, waiting to grow out. I also love having a tedious process attached to my work, and feeling like I’m piecing it all together to create something amazing.
S.Z: What were some of the challenges in transferring such a fragile set of works and installing them in COOPER COLE’s gallery space?
J.S: Packing and shipping is a huge challenge of transporting these works. I typically have someone make my most complicated crates for me, and I create the rest. Crating is typically pretty expensive if you get it done professionally, but I like knowing I’m able to do it myself and I’ve learned so much about wood-working & building things because of it. Sheets of foam really help to hold the pieces in place and ensure they don’t move during shipping in the creates. The 2 most complicated pieces to install in COOPER COLE Gallery were the hole-in-the-wall “Vortextural” and “Dimension” — the ring-shaped wormhole that hangs in the air. “Vortextural” took about 3 days to build/install and “Dimension” took about a full day. The rest of the pieces were pretty simple and hung in screws in the wall.
S.Z: I believe that this is your first solo exhibition in Canada. Your works have been especially well received in California and Miami. Could you talk a bit about joining Toronto’s art scene and what you hope to accomplish?
J.S: Yes, this was my first solo show in Toronto. I began working with COOPER COLE Gallery a few years ago. They’ve been a great gallery to work with and I am excited about our future plans. I think Toronto has a great growing art scene and I’m happy to be a part of it. In the future I’d love to do more public art sculptures & large-scale murals as well as exhibit my work in more museums.
*Note: The show is on display till August 10, 2013 at COOPER COLE Gallery, 1161 Dundas Street West. Gallery hours: Tuesday & Wednesday: 1 – 6 p.m. Thursday & Friday: 1 – 7 p.m. Saturday: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
VORTEXTURAL solo show in Toronto opening July 5th
I'm happy to announce I'll be having a solo show in Toronto opening Friday July 5th from 6-10pm. If you're in the area I hope you can make it out.
VORTEXTURAL A solo exhibition by Jen Stark Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto
Opening July 5th from 6-10pm
For more information, please contact the gallery: INFO@COOPERCOLEGALLERY.COM WWW.COOPERCOLEGALLERY.COM +1 647 347 3316
art ltd writeup
Here is a great review of my 2012 solo show at Martha Otero Gallery. It is featured on Art ltd. Magazine and written by Shana Nys Dambrot. Check it out HERE
Jen Stark: "To the Power Of" at Martha Otero Gallery by Shana Nys Dambrot Jan 2013
Jen Stark is a woman who knows how to make an unforgettable entrance: literally. Not only has she managed a smashing debut as an official LA-based artist, moving here from her native Miami a matter of weeks before the opening of "To the Power Of;" but the most dazzling of all the hypnotic works in that show are a pair of sculptural objects carving out geodesic portals that shimmer like rainbow rifts in the fabric of space. Both the freestanding Cosmic Distortion, 2012 (standing 36 1/2 inches) and the wall-embedded recess Whole, 2012 (with a radius approximately 42 inches) are impressive feats of patience, precision, and advanced fractal mathematics that beckon viewers forward, daring them to lean further, to reach inside when no one is looking, to go in. These negative spaces contain within their receding dimensions crisply defined, twisting stacks of cut paper, orchestrated to replicate geological, cosmological, and striated optics. Engineered through a process of algorithmic measurement and chromatic zestiness, her results speak to both the mysteries of sacred geometry and funhouse psychedelia.
By way of contrast, the wall-hanging Cascade (69 inches long) is made with the same classroom-simple set of materials, but references looser kinds of fractal math, such as that which might formulate the patterns of a waterfall, or a peacockÕs feathery spread. The level of dense, tiny detail in all the work seems to defy the limited powers of the hand and eye, rendering with a microscopic precision and macroscopic perspective at the same time, laying claim to the universal fundamentals of material structure, and to the joy of pure delight. Other acrylic paint-based works reference the striated fields, or alternatively set them to dissolving in waves of layered, organic, expressive abstraction. Those paint and felt-tip on paper works are vibrant and organic and quite beautiful, like ramshackle English-style gardens infused with a jazzy palette; but it's the construction-paper constructions that possess the alluring oomph of the magical. They don't depict so much as they evoke, or reenact, the sacred geometry of crop circles and star maps--but with a whiff of light-hearted Burning Man-style paganism, a nod to schoolroom craft time, and a wallop of post-Op Art abstraction.
Mural in DC
I just completed a large mural in Washington DC called "Cosmic Explosion". The mural was commissioned by a company called Vornado and painted inside their DC office. I painted 1 large mural (about 30 ft x 20 ft) and 4 smaller murals around their office space. The mural was painted by hand with Golden Acrylic paints.
The Miami Project Fair during Art Basel Miami: New holographic work
Come check out my 2 new holographic pedestals during Art Basel Miami at The Miami Project Fair. I'll be exhibiting in booth #719 with Cooper Cole Gallery. The fair is on from December 4th-9th. Check their website for hours: http://www.miami-project.com
The Miami Project Art Fair Booth 719 / Cooper Cole Gallery 2951 NE 1st Ave. Miami, FL 33137
DETAIL "Holographic Square" / 17" x 17" x 36" / acid-free foam board, holographic paper, glue, wood & paint / 2012
"Holographic Square" / 17" x 17" x 36" / acid-free foam board, holographic paper, glue, wood & paint / 2012
"Holographic Circle" / 20" x 20" x 35.5" / acid-free foam board, holographic paper, glue, wood & paint / 2012
Math & Psychedelia Inspire: Interview on CoolHunting.com
Check out my new interview up on CoolHunting.com explaining lots of things, and how my new solo LA show at Martha Otero Gallery is inspired by math and psychedelia. See the whole interview HERE:
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Art & Conversation with MOCA curator Alma Ruiz, artists Jen Stark & Sam Borkson (FriendsWithYou)
Please join us for an afternoon of art and conversation with MOCA curator Alma Ruiz, Artists Jen Stark and Sam Borkson (FriendsWithYou). Saturday November 3, 2012 at 3pm. On the occasion of Jen Stark's gallery exhibition To the Power Of.
Please RSVP at: gallery@marthaotero.com
Martha Otero Gallery 820 N Fairfax Ave Los Angeles, CA 90046 #(323) 951-1068
Smithsonian's "40 Under 40" book
The Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery came out with a book of their current show that my work is included in "40 Under 40: Craft Futures". Here is the article and photos of the book. If you'd like a copy for yourself, the book is also available to purchase HERE.
"40 UNDER 40" group exhibition book Written by: Nicholas R. Bell
The politics of craft, often so close to the surface, are largely absent from the paper sculptures of Jen Stark. Rather than tackle the deficiencies of contemporary culture, these unexpected objects serve as psychic way stations--colorful oases for individuals to de-stress through the contemplation of joyful things. In this sense they take up anew the mantle of Fancy--boisterous and bright aesthetic movement of the early nineteenth century that reframed American decorative arts through a whimsical lens. The exploitation of vivid color and pattern was paramount then, and returns as the foundation of Stark's oeuvre.
The artist first turned to paper as a student seeking an affordable medium, and from a materials standpoint even her most complex works remain deceptively simple in their construction. Start stacks sheets of drawing paper in the order she wishes them to appear, then cuts into them one leaf at a time, finding rhythm in their expanding geometries. She cites fractals as an influence on her work, and it is easy to see the attention paid to such natural phenomena. The tight margins between layers of color mimic evolutionary progress--the smallest shifts altering the final makeup the whole.
Power of Being is indicative of Stark's eye-popping style. A six-pointed star leaps off the wall, lending the paper a dynamic topography, then trickles down in ragged layers to a distant root. Alternating color pairings are both playful and suggestive of the star's meaty past, while its lingering tail invokes the underbelly of an iceberg. It is only one trick up Stark's sleeve to convey depth through the slimmest of things. Piece of an Infinite Whole demonstrates the artist's ability to transform space through the stacking of paper. In this case she has broken through a wall, removing the piece from the actual gallery, as if the right combination of colors might open up a wormhole in otherwise staid white cube. This rupturing of the standard plane is a recurring theme in Stark's work, and marks a current of provocation running beneath the simple pleasure of viewing it.
Stark underscores the labor inherent to her medium in How to Become a Millionaire in 100 Days. Toying with this culture's get-rich-quick mentality, and the notion of wealth as the accumulation of currency (i.e., paper), she has individually cut one million pieces of paper and left them in a glorious pile of bespoke confetti. A quick calculation based on the title uncovers a working rate of ten thousand scraps cut per day, a pace that would make anyone blanch, and one that serves to highlight her physical as well as mental determination.
Ultimately, Stark's palette and her deft use of the knife enchant not only through their brilliance, but also through her transformation of the most common of materials into something unique. Functionally, these strange forms serve little purpose, but to lose them would also be to miss them as one misses the most practical of things. Such is the importance of our ability to escape down the nearest, brightest rabbit hole.
