Digital nature by Jennifer Steinkamp

Description of project by Espacio Fundación Telefónica

A pioneer in the use of digital animation, Jennifer Steinkamp's work has focused on exploring issues related to perception, movement and space for three decades.

Espacio Fundación Telefónica presents under the title 'Jennifer Steinkamp. Digital Nature’, an exhibition that brings together five video installations by the American artist; a selection of works that recreate this artificial universe of fields of flowers and trees swayed by the wind. Images full of life that have been generated with 3D modeling programs and that reactivate our perception, dematerializing the walls of the room and generating places to explore and inspire, environments that make us reflect on diverse topics.

The technological advances of the last decades have been related sometimes with a certain loss of the pulse of the physical reality and with a progressive dematerialization of the experiences. Paradoxically, many artists use digital tools in order to generate immersive environments, in which to face the viewer with sensory experiences of great intensity.

Jennifer Steinkamp (Denver, USA, 1958) internationally recognized for her work done in video and with new technologies, is a clear example of this trend. A pioneering artist in the use of digital animation, her work has focused for three decades on exploring issues related to perception, movement and space. His work, which presents in the form of video installations, seeks to transform the architecture of the places where it is exhibited by projecting on walls, ceilings or windows three-dimensional images created by computer, whose objective is to alter the viewer's perception and generate spaces full of meanings.

In Spain, his work has been present in contemporary art galleries and museums: the MUSAC exhibited a work in 2005, 'Rapunzel', where he recreated the garden of Lady Gothel full of that mysterious flora in all its possible variations, and where A gentle breeze circulates that seems to endow it with life. Also his well-known piece 'Dervish' in the Gallery of Soledad Lorenzo in 2006, and in 2009 he starred in a whole exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Malaga.

A series of constants cross the work of the American artist:

Pioneer in the use of digital art

Jennifer Steinkamp incorporates animation from her early works into her artistic pieces. In the nineties, Steinkamp made abstract animations with geometries and biomorphic spots, many of his later works reflect a growing interest in the representation of elements taken from nature. Start working with the image, then also incorporate audio. In some cases, it even introduces sensors generating experiences to interact with the public.

Dematerialization of architecture

Play with space. The walls disappear and are covered with life. It fills its pieces with motifs that flow causing strange effects; an alteration of the senses, undulating images that evoke the forms of nature in movement and that alter the solid and stable perception of architecture when the viewer crosses the room.

Perception

The art in Jennifer Steinkamp acts as a trigger of perception and generator of immersive sensory experiences. The pieces are filled with abstract motifs that flow causing strange effects; an alteration of the senses.

Inspiration from vegetation

Since the beginning of her career in the 90s, Steinkamp has alternated abstract and geometric compositions with images whose elements allude to nature, vegetation and landscape. However, it wasn’t until 2002 with Jimmy Carter when her work took a new turn and she began to focus almost solely on plant imagery. Since then she began developing her renowned compositions of trees and flowers, often more of a figurative and realistic nature, of which there will be various examples in the exhibition.   

The 5 video installations on display include ‘Marie Curie’ (2011), a tribute to the prestigious scientist who received two Nobel Prizes for her pioneering research in the field of radioactivity, and who also happened to be a lover of botany. In this piece, Steinkamp renders more than forty types of flowers and pays tribute to Curie while at the same time having us reflect on the effects that atomic energy and explosions have on nature itself. 

One of her better known pieces will also be featured at the exhibition, ‘Dervish’ (2004), a piece inspired by the hypnotic dancing of the Islamic Mevlevi Order, whose movement she creates using tree branches. The movement of these digital trees speaks of the power that nature exerts over human beings and how contemplating this can, occasionally, provoke the exaltation of the senses related to the freeing of the soul and a communion with the divine.

Both works will be accompanied by two works created in 2013. One of them is 'Bouquet', in which it brings together trees that, viewed on a large scale, change the traditional notion of a delicate floral bouquet to that of a dynamic and threatening forest. The other is called 'Garlands' and projects a woven garland made up of medicinal flowers.

One of his latest works 'Ovaries' (2107) completes the exhibition. It is a representation of ripe fruits trapped floating in space while maturing.

Scientific interest

Jennifer Steinkamp shows in many of her works a clear interest in scientific topics and issues: on the first discoveries about electricity, about the origin of life on earth and about some reflections on nuclear energy.