Jennifer Steinkamp: Orbit

Jennifer Steinkamp, Orbit, Installation view, ACME., Los Angeles

ACME Gallery, Los Angeles

October 17 - November 14, 2009

By Lara Taubman

An argument with one of my colleagues over the gravity of Jennifer Steinkamp’s work made me rethink her latest installation Orbit at ACME in Los Angeles. Steinkamp is a mid-career animation artist, who emerged just footsteps behind the generation of the Feminist artists of the late eighties and nineties, such as, Elizabeth Murray and Jennifer Bartlett. These women were “in your face,” engaged with devilish “beauty,” and at one point or another, all of them have succeeded brilliantly- and failed respectably.

A new show of Steinkamp’s animation at ACME falls somewhat short on space as the walls feel cluttered. Unlike her previous installations, Orbit feels closed in and her signature silhouette, of the viewer whose presence interrupts the image, was too close up and hard to read either as an aberrant or as a part of the overall installation. I kept feeling as though I needed to back up but could never find the right spot to watch. And yet, the walls looked deliciously like paint and pattern chips buttressed against each other. I daresay the intensity delivered that ecstatic moment of being in the thrilling presence of natural beauty. Four walls show brilliant brown, green and pink trees positioned so we are looking up at them blowing in the wind. Catty-cornered walls show verdant and lush trees filled with flowers, contrasted with the other side that is more Spartan in its autumnal, winter tones. Although conspicuously silent, these animated trees blow in a wind that could either be warm or cold, launching the imaginative power of the viewer.

I like the force of nature experience that exists throughout all of Steinkamp’s animation installations. The more ambitious they are, the more she brings us to a universally indescribable experience, just as nature does. At the same time, my friend’s dose of suspicion of beauty for beauty’s sake was right on. Could it be that Steinkamp is herself seduced by the Great Pan? Is it enough to dance with the Pagans at midnight, rather than go into the Underworld and explore deeper waters?

Lara Taubman is a freelance international curator and art critic based in Los Angeles. She is a correspondent for international renowned art journals such as ARTnews, Contemporary, Modern Painters and Sculpture Magazine.

Filed Under: Reviews