Jennifer Steinkamp

The Portland Art Museum is pleased to announce an exhibition featuring the internationally renowned media artist Jennifer Steinkamp (American, born 1958). Steinkamp creates highly detailed, digital animations of motifs from the natural world. Projected at very large scale, her works activate the architectural spaces in which they are shown and play with the limits of perception by opening up an almost otherworldly sense of space.

This summer the Portland Art Museum will bring together four remarkable projections in a lively presentation on the passing of time as revealed by our natural environment. The dramatic centerpiece Orbit will fill one wall of the Stott gallery from corner to corner, depicting the celestial mechanics of a planet spinning through its year. Turbulent winds blow branches, leaves and flowers of a tree through the seasons, immersing the viewer in swirling motion. Two works from the Judy Crook series occupy the walls perpendicular to Orbit. These animations represent individual trees standing firm as their branches sway, bloom, and drop their leaves in another depiction of nature tracking time. Kamp Tree is a fourth work to be installed in the Inskeep gallery. It is a smaller scale work created in collaboration with children participating in a summer art camp at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and will be a lighthearted introduction to the visually intense works in the Stott. [...]

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website