Jennifer Schmidt (b. 1975) is a multi-media artist living in Brooklyn, NY, who often works with print media, graphic design and sound to create sculptural installations, video and performative gestures.
She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Delaware in 1997; and is regular full-time faculty within the Print Area and graduate program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Diapason Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY, Sonic Fragments, Princeton University, NJ, International Print Center New York, NY, Volume Gallery, New York, NY, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, International Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany, Video Pool, Winnipeg, Canada, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, DE, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA, Jen Bekman Gallery, New York, NY, and Gallery 312, Chicago, IL. Recent curatorial projects include: Event Horizon, Public Art Happening, Boston, MA; Bit Logic, GASP, Boston, MA; Mybrary, BUILD, San Francisco, CA; LINGO, ONI Gallery, Boston, MA; and 13/Proof, Anchor Graphics, Chicago, IL. Recent artist residencies include: Homestead AK, Alaska; Brooklyn Community Access Television/Rotunda Gallery, NY; The Banff Centre, Canada; Elsewhere Artist Collaborative, NC; The Experimental Television Center, NY; Frans Masereel Centre, Belgium; Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, DE; Virginia Center for Creative Art, VA; and Vermont Studio Center, VT. Jennifer Schmidt is a 2007 fellow in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists' Books from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and is a 2008 grant recipient from the Puffin Foundation.
Artist Statement
I am inspired by the everyday objects, patterns, games, and linguistic commonplaces of popular customs. I use, re-arrange, and re-present ordinary materials and signs in order to explore notions of individual identity, objectivity/subjectivity, history/fable, and the inherent value implied by a gesture or act of intervention. Many of my artworks can be read as waves, signals of hello or goodbye, in which the meaning of the work exists in the participants' ability to infer meaning based on their knowledge of everyday media, beliefs, and situational context.
To date, most of my creative projects have drawn on the use of repeat patterning and aural/visual sampling as a metaphorical means to study human behavior, modes of reasoning, and visceral explorations of a subject. I consistently work with a vocabulary of themes inspired by film, music, and print media, in addition to exploring the technological translation of symbols and information within contemporary culture, e.g. the coupon dash, scantron test forms, ICU life monitors, small pox and folk motifs.
I wish to immerse myself in the research and application of motifs, encoded information, and operatic functions in an attempt to make non-linear and abstract associations involving the "perceptual event" of experiencing signs and signifiers as static and moving images. Conscious and subconscious methods of interpretation come into existence within my two-dimensional and time-based work, asking the viewer to mimetically identify with the subject, while considering the source, method, and sequencing of their display.
"...The implied horizon of our 'habits of seeing,' structured by language, narrative, identification, and intentionality, and that which perpetually eludes and confounds such structuring" is of great interest to me.
