Botanic

Jennifer Steinkamp (b. 1958, Denver, CO; lives and works in Los Angeles) uses 3-D computer animation and new media to create video installations that activate architectural space and alter phenomenological perception. She designs and digitally simulates movement of organic and abstract forms such as trees, flowers, and floating fabrics. Her works are displayed as site-specific projections that amplify their architectural setting by blurring the boundary between real and illusionistic space. These animated environments, while visually alluring, often carry subtle ominous references such as Daisy Bell, which features an array of beautiful yet poisonous flowers. Time plays a significant role in Steinkamp’s work, often depicting cyclical occurrences such as changing seasons and life cycles. These cycles do not typically have a beginning, middle, or end, but rather worki with non-narrative concepts of change. In this sense, her work is more aligned with artists who prioritized sensorial experience, like James Turrell, Mary Corse, and other members of the Light and Space movement of the 1960s, than with film or other such time/media-based art.