Minimalism in an Age of Hoarding: Artist Jennifer Vanderpool
I first
experienced Jennifer Vanderpool’s hypersensitive reality close to a decade ago,
having walked into one of her elaborate installations at the former Bandini
Gallery in Culver City. It was one of
the most obsessive, engaging installations I had come across, and it remains
as such in my memory today.
Jennifer is
someone who understands the charm of visual narratives, her works unfolding
with an imaginary appreciation, and this room-sized setting was one of her most
intricate stagings. Called, 'Hysterical
Paradise', the title summed up well this over-the-top, technicolor landscape of
flora, fun, fervor and fanaticism (with the countless hours spanned to spin,
tie, mold, paint, and glitter the eruption of pieces, immediately
evident). The work was both appealing
and slightly unsettling (like eating too much cotton candy at the fair);
hugging that fine line between extremes that Jennifer does so well.
Jennifer
works across mediums—performance, photography, video, projections,
installation, collage—and often combines many concepts and designs into one
in-depth work. Her creative vision
probes the intellectual concerns of the day (consumption and its modern
disorders: eating, hoarding, the societal discrepancies arising from the global
economy; the concerns of self and the role of contemporary feminism). But while unabashed of delving into the
immediacy of the visual (colour, texture, form), Jennifer is also an artist who
does not take the aesthetic at face value, frequently implanting herself within
a work, whether physically via a performance or within the story, itself.
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| Detail, "Hysterical Paradise," 2008 |
The mementos of Jennifer’s life further act as signifiers for larger historical and social narratives. Keepsakes such as her grandmother’s jewelry, buttons, and baking moulds, to throwaways like Starbucks coffee cups and Dollar Store trinkets, to advertising and vintage dress patterns retrieved from Soviet area Europe; are all repurposed into sculptures, collages, videoscapes, and patterned backdrops of reimagined prints.
Watching
Jennifer’s oeuvre expand over the years, I have noticed a gradual calming. It
is almost as if a fascination for the adornment of ‘things’ has been replaced
in favour for a layering of content. To
walk into the sensory overload of Jennifer’s earlier installations was to feel
a compulsion to touch, pull the many bits and pieces apart then put them back
together again, much like a puzzle. Her
more recent works still embrace a love of collage and video but the effect has changed,
the images flattened out, becoming more self-contained and controlled. That’s
not to say that Jennifer has tidied-up her act to emulate a minimalist vision
but it does suggest a shift has occurred in intent: where once the vision
seemed to overpower the artist, now Jennifer is master over the work.
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| Installation Detail, GGU, 2008 |
Of course,
as its creator, Jennifer’s work is an extension of herself and the intimacy of
her pieces often expose a strong psycho-socio undertone. In one of her earliest documented video
pieces, Jennifer sits in front of a table of rainbow coloured confections and
throughout the duration of the performance wordlessly eats each one of the
candies until the table is empty. What
begins as an eye catching palette with a pleasant tinge of nostalgia (who doesn’t
remember a childhood with some fondness for a particular sweet) turns into a
grueling act of self-punishment.
Jennifer acknowledges artist Ann Hamilton as a key influence, having viewed her momentous installations at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh at an impressionable age. (The melting of wax and figurine birds but two elements enjoyed by both). Other feminist artists such as Adrian Piper (known for her inseparability of art from philosophy and scholarship); and Martha Rosler are also cited by Jennifer as significant to her own practice. (Rosler’s 1975 performance the 'Semiotics of the Kitchen' foreshadows the continued fascination with the modern ‘domesticated’ woman in equal terms exalted and disclaimed in our society’s obsessive Food Network culture). In turn, Jennifer’s own unique approach to performance combines a Dadaist sense of humour (often employing theatrics to the point of the absurd) with an appreciation for audience. As Jennifer explains, a good artist takes into account her surroundings and the embracing of community by many feminist works of the 70s is something that Jennifer herself embraces in her own endeavours, today.
wunderkammer ll, 2006 Performance Video from Jennifer Vanderpool on Vimeo https://vimeo.com/134802791.
In a parallel work Jennifer devours a pyramid of pastries contained within stacks of pink boxes. As the display disappears, Jennifer visibly retches, the
look on her face taking on an out-of-it confusion. It is
moments such as this--excessive, overindulgent--that the work appears to
consume the artist and its interpretation is left up to the viewer: an attractive woman, gorging herself on
sweets, draws immediate associations with a compendium of eating disorders
(what contemporary woman of today does not have some knowledge of these
diseases) while the pastel allusion of the sweets elicits memories of every
little girls’ fantasy playroom, the pink taffeta wish fulfillment of 'Pretty in
Pink'. This is Jennifer at her best,
toying with extremes, exposing the contradictions of our contemporary culture,
and removing the rose-tinted glasses to reveal what lies beneath.Jennifer acknowledges artist Ann Hamilton as a key influence, having viewed her momentous installations at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh at an impressionable age. (The melting of wax and figurine birds but two elements enjoyed by both). Other feminist artists such as Adrian Piper (known for her inseparability of art from philosophy and scholarship); and Martha Rosler are also cited by Jennifer as significant to her own practice. (Rosler’s 1975 performance the 'Semiotics of the Kitchen' foreshadows the continued fascination with the modern ‘domesticated’ woman in equal terms exalted and disclaimed in our society’s obsessive Food Network culture). In turn, Jennifer’s own unique approach to performance combines a Dadaist sense of humour (often employing theatrics to the point of the absurd) with an appreciation for audience. As Jennifer explains, a good artist takes into account her surroundings and the embracing of community by many feminist works of the 70s is something that Jennifer herself embraces in her own endeavours, today.
Martha Rosler, 1975, Semiotics of the Kitchen, https://youtu.be/Vm5vZaE8Ysc
In recent years, Jennifer has exhibited in locales as far
afield as the Ukraine, Russia, and Colombia and an understanding for audience
often takes into account cultural differences and historical nuances, as
well. Jennifer approaches these
site-specific creations with the charm and humility that imbues her work in general,
making the works both relevant and approachable by the general public. A 2013 performance, ‘Flores para el Trueque’,
in Bogota saw Jennifer exchanging flowers (11,000 pieces constructed from
detritus and items purchased from a local market) as a street vendor wandering
the cobbled streets at the Sunday market.
Patrons traded items for the flowers that amassed into a collection of
trinkets, small coins, talisman, and religious icons, that Jennifer later
displayed at the gallery.
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| Performance Still, Flores para el Trueque, Bogota, 2013 |
The performance is all
the more germane set against the historical backdrop of Bogota’s thriving flower trade. A trade that flourishes worldwide under the disproportionate
imbalance of low wages paid to the country’s largely unskilled working-class
poor (the displaced of the last century’s drug and political wars). For Jennifer, good performance work inserts
the artist into the ménage and takes into account not only surrounding but
instills a sense of community with the larger audience.
Which takes us up to date (in shorthand : ) to Jennifer’s evolving work now; that much like her multi-disciplinary approach typically includes several projects on the go, as well as teaching. As part of a 2015 aptly named 'Hothouse' (sic) residency at UCLA , Jennifer created 'The Trial of Isabella', described in announcements as an “operatic contemporary theater work fus[ing] high drama, costuming, and unique video imagery” into a raw narrative that probed the relation of the female body as a site for the struggle for power. Working in conjunction with set designer Paige Bossier, the mixed media/performance was re-enacted as part of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara’s On Edge Festival. As is Jennifer’s signature, the site of a personal observation grew to address a larger societal ailment, in this case the prevailing hush-hush approach towards sexual assaults and domestic violence. Stories of such violence are so commonplace nowadays that a systemized do-nothing policy routinely greets their telling. One need only pick up the paper or listen to the news to hear again and again of another such occurrence but in the vein of 70s feminism, giving voice to what is not heard is part of the reclaiming of power. Here Jennifer literally tells the story of Isabella and her attack by an acquaintance, placing herself in the collage of a montaged videospace.
Like
Jennifer’s other work the visuals are pleasing yet pushing up against the
unsettling story simmering underneath, the audience looks on, compelled to
watch further despite a rising discomfort.
Still, I can’t help but reflect back on Jennifer’s dizzying
installations of years' before and notice once again that the artist is in
complete control of her work—she has taken back her power.
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Performance Still, Flores para el Trueque, Bogota, 2013
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Trial of Isabella, Video Still, 2015
HOTHOUSE 2015, UCLA/Departmentof World Arts and
Cultures/Dance residency
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To see what Jennifer’s up to next please visit her website
at: www.jennifervanderpool.com.
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| In front of Hysterical Paradise, 2008 |
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