In That Case: Havruta in Contemporary Art

San Francisco-based artist Jenny Odell and stylist and window designer Philip Buscemi collaborate on a new installation for the havruta case. Based on the Talmudic study principle of havruta—the study of religious texts by people in pairs—In That Case at The CJM repurposes the practice for the contemporary art community, by pairing visual artists with established professionals in another field, of their choosing. Odell and Buscemi use the havruta case to create The Bureau of Suspended Objects, a series of window-like displays of objects in a cabinet of curiosities manner.  ...

Jenny Odell is a Bay Area native/captive with an MFA in Design from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BA in English Literature from UC Berkeley. Her work makes use of secondhand imagery and vernacular online sources in an attempt to highlight the material dimension of our modern networked existence. Because her practice exists at the intersection of research and aesthetics, she has often been compared to a natural scientist. ...  Odell teaches at Stanford University.

Born in 1972 in the suburbs of upstate New York, Philip Buscemi has been working as a Stylist and Window Designer for many years in and around San Francisco’s Union Square, where he has learned to merge the Fine arts and retail to create interesting and fantastical displays. He has been working alongside San Francisco’s celebrated interior designer Ken Fulk for the last 12 years as a Stylist designing environments, installations and events. ... Buscemi earned a B.F.A. in Painting and Sculpture at The Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI, and has won many artist awards and exhibited his works in many group shows in California. 

Exhibition overview from museum website