Jennifer pastor overcoming obstacles
Jennifer Pastor (born 1966) is an American sculptor and Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California Irvine. Pastor examines issues of space encompassing structure, body and object orientations, imaginary forms, narrative and progressions of sequence.
Contents
- Jennifer pastor overcoming obstacles
- Biography
- Exhibitions
- Select solo exhibitions
- Select group exhibitions
- The Perfect Ride 2003
- Dead Landscape 20092010
- Endless Arena 2013
- Museum collections
- Grants
- Publications
- References
Pastor’s work has been described to play with the connection between the piece and the observer, making the observer hyper aware of their presence. Her sculptures including The Perfect Ride (2003), Dead Landscape (2009–2010), and Endless Arena (2013) are some examples of the connection made by Pastor between the piece and viewer. Her mediums range from animation to steel, and allow a mingling of the materials in a certain space.
Pastor's openness to a creative experience can be demonstrated in her participation of "Office Hours", which are fifty-minute sessions between a student and an artist. These one-on-one sessions allows for an exchange of questions and ideas in a non lecture environment to help the flow of creative ideas and questions. Office Hours encourages reflection and poses questions to better one's work.
Biography
Pastor was born in Hartford, Connecticut. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1988, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and went on to study at the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture in 1992.
Exhibitions
Pastor has exhibited in numerous museums including Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Pastor was included in the 1996 Sao Paulo Biennial, the 1997 Whitney Biennial and the 2003 Venice Biennale.
Select solo exhibitions
Select group exhibitions
Pastor has participated in a number of group exhibitions through the years, from 1993 to 2015. These group exhibitions have been featured in various countries such as France, Brazil, the Netherlands, Italy, the U.K., and Korea, along with numerous states in the U.S.
The Perfect Ride, 2003
The Perfect Ride is a three part installation featuring a large, luminescent sculpture inspired by the Hoover Dam’s water circulation system, along a magnified sculptural rendering of the human inner and outer ear based on Pastor’s memory of a model in a medical museum. The third part is a projected line drawn-animation of a cowboy performing an impossible, but what would otherwise be a perfect rodeo ride on a bull. The ideas behind the work are about balance and circulation, and how various organizing “armatures” direct systems of movement. The exhibition examines human’s ability to triumph over nature and it exemplifies Pastor’s extensive research on structures of movement. Pastor has explained that her fascination for rodeo competitions grew from “trying to learn the aesthetic language, or system, that everyone in the rodeo seems instinctively attuned to”.
Dead Landscape, 2009–2010
The work Dead Landscape is an installation featuring 40 drawings and photographs that juxtaposes archival materials on wars concerning the U.S. with Pastor's own drawings on public, culturally sanctioned fights, ranging from gladiator events to the Ultimate Fighting Heavy Weight Championship. The work was inspired by Pastor's research involving veteran combat artists from campaigns such as World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Operation of Iraq. The research involved interviewing these combat artists, as well as collecting "first impression" drawings of the war. The drawings were the initial reaction to the event, before the person had a chance to alter or subtly change the experience in their head. Many of these archival drawings and photographs, of which she accessed through the National Military Archives of the Navy, Army, and Marines, have never been on display before her exhibit. The contrasting element is Pastor's own "impression drawings", of when she attended local and national organized fights. These two elements are paired together in the installation creating an interesting opposition.
Endless Arena, 2013
Endless Arena is a large-scale endless loop sculpture inspired from "blind gesture drawings" made of electroless nickel-plated steel and painted fiberglass. The piece was created from gesture drawings Pastor created over a two-year period of attending unregulated fighting events. Endless Arena came from an exploration of the space of the fights Pastor attended, including synchronized movements and the shifting dominance of the bodies. "Pastor sought to synthesize and distill fragments of these observations, spaces, and visceral experiences into a sculptural work."