Jane Mulfinger

Jane Mulfinger
Born 1961
Pasadena, California
Education Stanford University; Royal College of Art
Known for installation, Sculpture, Drawing
Awards Unilever Sculpture Award, Elephant Trust, British Arts Council Travel Award, Microsoft Research Grant, UCSB-Individual Research Grant
Website personal website

Jane Mulfinger is an American artist whose work includes installation and site-relational installations. Since 1994, she has taught in the Department of Studio Art and College of Creative Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. She became full professor in 2009, serving as Chairman of the Art Department from 2011-2014. In 2012, Mulfinger and Stephanie Washburn co-curated “This Was Funny Yesterday” in the CCS Gallery at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Exhibition history

Mulfinger first achieved prominence for installations featured in UK exhibitions, soon after graduating from London’s Royal College of Art. Early on, she presented solo exhibitions at Camerawork, London (1990); Flaxman Gallery, London (1991); Berning and Daw, London (1992); Southampton City Art Gallery (1992); and Mayor Gallery (1994 and 1998).[1][2] Mulfinger's work was included in group exhibitions at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (1988); Projects UK, Newcastle (1989); Whitechapel Gallery (1990); Flaxman Gallery, London (1990); William Jackson Gallery, London (1991); Third Israeli Biennale of Photography (1991);[3] Camden Arts Centre (1992);[4] CCA Glasgow (1995);[5] and 30 Underwood Street Gallery.[6] This Camden Art Centre exhibition also featured sited works in St. Pancras Station, where Mulfinger’s stereotypical "ethnic jokes" raised eyebrows.

Since moving to Santa Barbara 1994, she has had solo exhibitions with Franklin Furnace Archive(1995), Hanes Art Center at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1997), Wake Forest University Gallery (1997), Galerie Guido Carbone, Turin, IT (1997, 2000 and 2008).[7][8][9] Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum(1999 and 2004),[10][11] Otis College of Art and Design (2004),[12] and New Chinatown Barbershop (2004).[13] During this period, she presented several works outdoors, such as interactive kiosks that invited passersby to explore their regrets, presented on the Market Square in Cambridge, UK (2005), funded by a Microsoft Research Grant.[14][15] Regarding the back-pack version, Paul Arendt remarks how the Kiosk of Regrets serves as a reminder that he/she is not alone," since "contributors can unload their troubles onto someone else's shoulders.[16] Her Regrets project, a collaboration with Graham Budgett, traveled to "Simplicity: The Art of Complexity" at Ars Electronica (2006) [17] and Le Cube Festival in Paris (2008).[18] In 2008, she and Billy Hood created the Mobile Art Library, which toured three locations and was jointly sponsored by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara County Arts Commission and the University of California Institute for Research into the Arts.

Her later work was included in group shows such as: "New Works, New Spaces" (2002) at Armory Center for the Arts,[19] "Installations Inside/Out 20TH Anniversary Exhibition"(2009) at the Armory Center for the Arts,[20] and "The Gildless Age"(2016) at the Torrance Art Museum.[21]

Work

Found objects

In the late 1980s, Mulfinger started reworking found objects, sometimes leaving them "as is," sometimes slightly altering them, while at other times transforming them beyond recognition. In 1989, she mounted found mirrors to reflect the image of a 1930s-era school photo onto a church ceiling, where large-scale household goods like beds, tables, and chairs, wrapped in white fabric, dangled from wooden beams.[22] That same year, she began draping discarded garments over skylights to affect stained-glass.[22] To create Deluge(1990), Mulfinger draped layers of blue clothes over skylights streaming with light, filling a gallery with "subdued subaqueous light."[23]

In 1993, she projected slides of found photographs onto Braille books, whose pages flapped as fans circulated air.[24] In 1995, she began exhibiting her “Regrets” series, for which she sandblasted people’s actual regrets onto 50 rear-view mirrors mounted on posts.[25] Since then, variations of this series have been presented in Cambridge (2005), Linz (2006),[26] and Paris (2008).[27]

Glass

Mulfinger's 1991 exhibition of Braille-embossed photos were accompanied by dozens of second-hand spectacles etched with texts, whose shadows relay stories on the wall. In 1992, she engraved window panes with “ethnic jokes” relayed in original tongues, which floated above ticket agent windows at St. Pancras Station.[4] In 1993, she exhibited texts conveying famous people’s prison experiences etched on clear glass, accompanied by 20 pairs of crystal shoes cast from lost items and a skylight effecting stained-glass made from discarded clothes.[28] Her New Chinatown Barbershop show (2004) featured glass etchings of maps that showed the power of maps to "show relationships among places and periods.".[13] In 2014, she cast many more cast-off objects in glass, from telephones and blowdryers to irons, tools, drills, paper weights, and chandeliers.

Mulfinger has exhibited a Plexiglas tube filled with feathers that go aflutter as passersby wisk by.[29] Indicative of her ongoing interest in transparency and feathers all a flutter, Sue Hubbard associates her puffy, large-scale inflatable couch (2000) with "sitting on a cloud watching clouds float by."[2]

Text

In addition to etching text onto second-hand spectacles and rearview mirrors or embossing Braille on paper, Mulfinger has embossed text onto plasticene and engraved it into silver.[22]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.mayorgallery.com/exhibitions/past/
  2. 1 2 Sue Hubbard. "Beyond the Body." Contemporary Visual Arts. Issue 22 (November 1998). pp. 42-43.
  3. ↑ John Stathacos.”The Persistence of Memory.” "Third Israeli Biennale of Photography". Dvir Publishers Ltd. Tel Aviv. 1991. pp. 35-38.
  4. 1 2 Sarah Kent. "Northern Adventures. Time Out London. 7 October 1992.
  5. ↑ Emmanuel Cooper. “Boxer.” "Contemporary Art". January 1996.
  6. ↑ Hugh Stoddart. "chora". Contemporary Visual Arts Issue 26 (April 2000). Pp. 58-59
  7. ↑ Tiziana Conti. “Jane Mulfinger.” Tema Celeste. March 2000. Page 110
  8. ↑ http://www.artelabonline.com/articoli/view_article.php?id=1628
  9. ↑ Luca Beatrice. Questo Mondo é Fantastico: Ventanni con Guido Carbone. Milano. Electa. 2008.
  10. ↑ Marina Walker. “Dangling ‘Modifier’.” Santa Barbara News Press. December 3, 1999. Pages 15 & 16.
  11. ↑ Josef Woodward. “10 Best Local Art Shows.” Santa Barbara News Press. Dec. 26, 2004.
  12. ↑ https://www.otis.edu/sites/default/files/3SoloChickPR_0.pdf
  13. 1 2 Alison Pearlman. "Space out of Sync: The New Chinatown Barbershop." Southwest Review. 92:2 (2007). p. 184
  14. ↑ http://regrets.org.uk/REGRETS_PR.pdf
  15. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/nov/10/art
  16. ↑ Paul Arendt. "Brainwaves: The Kiosk of Regrets." The Guardian November 10, 2005.
  17. ↑ http://archive.aec.at/showmode/print/?id=27#27
  18. ↑ http://lecube.com/fr/espace-enseignants/jane-mulfinger-graham-budgett-regrets_124
  19. ↑ David Pagel."'New Works' Show Reopens the Pasadena's Armory. Los Angeles Times. April 19, 2002.
  20. ↑ Christopher Knight."Art Review:Installations Inside/Out at Pasadena's Armory Center for the Arts. Los Angeles Times. October 5, 2009.
  21. ↑ Christopher Knight. "The Gildless Age: A Different Tale of the '1 Percent' at the Torrance Art Museum",Los Angeles Times. September 23, 2016.
  22. 1 2 3 Kate Bush. "Sight Unseen". Jane Mulfinger. London. Dominic Dering Fine Art and Nick Silver. 1994. pp. 30-31.
  23. ↑ The Guardian. 1 August 1990. B15
  24. ↑ Lorna White. “Public and Private: Mansfield Place Church.” Variant. 1991. P. 34.
  25. ↑ Simon Morley. “Jane Mulfinger.” Art Monthly . September 1995. p. 189.
  26. ↑ http://www.nouveauxmedias.net/ars06.html
  27. ↑ http://archeologue.over-blog.com/article-20282838.html
  28. ↑ Lauris Morgan-Griffen. “Sole Searching.” Independent. 21 July 1994.
  29. ↑ Maria Campitelli, "Aqua Vita et Mors," XIVth Edition of Rural Cultures Value and Memory. May 3, 2002.
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