Jeanine Oleson is an American interdisciplinary artist working with images, materials and language that she forms into complex and humorous objects, performance, film, video, sound, and installation. Oleson's work explores themes including audience, language, land/site, music, and late Capitalist alienation
The subject of Oleson's art is questioning and confronting big ideas. Her interdisciplinary work is marked by an interest in the conflict between contemporary life, the sensorial, and material concerns. Thinking through research and hands-on making/craft, she creates complicated, intertwined bodies of work. These large-scale projects involve performative, complex tableaux that result in responses anywhere from confusion to pleasure. Oleson's practice encompasses many different approaches to making her objects including performances, videos, installations, sound/music, art-based activism and her role as an educator.Oleson often works collaboratively. In addition to her work as an artist, she is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Rutgers University. She has also taught at Parsons School of Design, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Sarah Lawrence College, NYU, MICA, and the University of Iowa. Oleson is also a lead collaborator since 2013 on a participatory project, Photo Requests from Solitary that provides images to people held in solitary confinement and supports efforts to end the practice in US prisons and jails. Her collaborators are Jean Casella and Laurie Jo Reynolds.
Exhibitions
Selected exhibitions include the following.
2017 Can you feel it?, Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles, CA
2017 Conduct Matters, Hammer Project, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, May 6-August 6, curated by Connie Butler and Emily Gonzalez-Jarrett
2016 The Voice, Coreana Museum of Art, Seoul, S. Korea, curated by Jieun Seo 2016
2016 It Can Howl, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA, curated by Daniel Fuller
2015 The Eccentrics, SculptureCenter, Queens, NY, curated by Ruba Katrib
2015 Destroy, she said, Pierogi, Brooklyn, curated by Saul Anton and Ethan Spigland
2014 A Sea Change Into Lands Rich and Strange, Abrons Art Center, curated by Amanda Parmer
2014 Hear, Here, residency/exhibition/public programs, New Museum, New York, NY, curated by Johanna Burton
2014 Still Acts, La Mama Galleria, NY, curated by Ian Daniels and Sara Reisman
