Jenny Kendler
Though my work as a whole bridges mediums from video to miniature sculpture, recently, I have been most invested in making drawings.
Drawing, I feel, provides an immediacy and intimacy necessary to these works. Drawing was our (human beings’) earliest means to communicate ideas, tens of thousands of years before the advent of written language, seen in the caves of Chauvet and Trois-Frères. As an artist, when I have an idea that I want to communicate to others, drawing is the most direct and malleable medium. I enjoy how honest pencil and paper are — how different they are from today’s major museum standards of giant back-lit photographs or Franz Kline-esque grandiose abstract painting. I find something very feminine in these small, detailed graphite drawings that I hope transmits to the viewer as an honest passion and warmth.
On a somewhat separate note, to continue from where I left off in my previous post regarding the feminine sublime, these works are very much about the transformation and dissolution of self. Often an idea for a drawing comes to me by locating the visceral sense of that experience on my own body, as a jumping off point for transformation in these metaphorical acts. As a body of works these drawings are inspired by moments in the biologically-driven life cycle of a human organism, and are created in response to society’s general denial of these biological imperatives’ impact on our lives. They are about how our failure to recognize our animal nature blocks our ability to truly recognize ourselves as a species. They are images of human beings who accept the ‘otherness’ in themelves and nature, accept how they too will lose themselves and go back to the earth. Tender and brutal, and often playful, I hope that these images, through intimacy, beauty and visceral transference, will bring to the viewer an awareness of their own body and mind in relation to the rest of the natural world.
Jenny Kendler’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Exit Art in NYC, Claremorris Gallery in Ireland, The Yeosu Art Festival in Korea, The Contemporary Artists Center in Massachusetts, Ellen Curlee Gallery in St. Louis, and in Chicago at estudiotres and Kasia Kay Art Projects. In late Summer 2009, she will be participating in the Beijing Biennale. Jenny Kendler is also a member of the artist collective Henbane.
More of her work can be seen at jennykendler.com
I agree with what you say about drawing. It is immediate and could be considered, especially by today’s art world standards, humble. I tend to “lose myself” in the physical act of drawing or hands-on making. The mind body connection strengthens as you get “in the zone.” I very much enjoy this more instinctual (perhaps animal?) way of being and making. When working more conceptually, or editing video I tend to stay more in the brain, in analysis.
Interesting, even though I feel more complete when I am drawing or doing kung fu because my mind and body are so connected, it is also at these time I most loose my sense of individual self.
I see it as connecting in to the universe or a great chain of being. Perhaps it relates to what you say: “our failure to recognize our animal nature blocks our ability to truly recognize ourselves as a species. They are images of human beings who accept the ‘otherness’ in themselves and nature, accept how they too will lose themselves and go back to the earth.”
Thanks for sharing!