PeopleFaculty, Emeriti

Jennifer Steinkamp

Jennifer Steinkamp (American, b. 1958) is a Los Angeles based media and installation artist whose video animations explore nature, architecture, contemporary social issues, and the passage of time. Nature, twisted and changed through technology, is Steinkamp’s signature subject, and since the late 1980s the artist has produced a wide range of computer-generated realities. By manipulating existing computer code, primarily using the 3-D animation software, Steinkamp transforms architectural spaces with light, dematerializing walls and filling the constructed environment with hyperreal and, simultaneously, clearly artificial mimicry of organic forms. Steinkamp’s colorful moving images disorient and lull the viewer into a sense of calm—a world both familiar and foreign, real and virtual. She has been the subject of numerous exhibitions at such venues as: The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; The Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York; MassMoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; and the Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah. Her art has toured worldwide with the band U2. She has received many awards and recognition, she was the J. Paul Getty Artist in Residence, Getty Artist program in 2010-11, she was the US representative for the 11th Cairo International Biennale, Egypt; she received an Honorary Doctorate from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. Steinkamp is featured in many prominent public art collections.