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JANE MULFINGER, mulfinger@arts.ucsb.edu, http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/mulfinger
site-specific installation, sculpture, and interactive art
Jane Mulfinger is an avid collector of human artifacts, engaging her public in
both conceptual and perceptual reflections on the significances of human activity
in site-specific installations, performance, and sculpture. Used clothing, second-hand
spectacles, found texts, and a collection of WPA drawings of Los Angeles straddle
the expansive view of her archives. A graduate of Stanford University and the
Royal College of Art, with Honors and Distinction respectively, MulfingerŐs early
work is recognized as addressing the relationship between architecture, memory,
and the human body. Her representation of the familiar disrupts and challenges
our sense of site, history, and social milieu. Her most longstanding work (since
1994), the Regrets series, is a growing collection of anonymous regrets, most
recently sponsored by Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK, and the University of
Westminster, London, continued with iterations at Ars Electronica, Linz, in 2006,
Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Santa
Barbara, 2007-2008, and Le Cube, Paris, in 2008. The series takes on the nature
of human regret, proposing that the concise admissions and reflections are positive
indicators of the potential for learning and renewal.
MulfingerŐs work has been seen in other established venues such as the Mayor
Gallery, Camden Arts Center, Underwood St. Gallery, London, the Orchard Gallery,
Derry, CCA Glasgow, Franklin Furnace Archive, New York, Southhampton Museum of
Art, and Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, well as temporary off-site locations such
as St. Pancras railway station, London, X-star video peep show in Paris, a disused
industrial print factory in Newcastle with Projects UK (now Locus+), and a 17th
century church house for widows in Belgium for the Belgian Bienal. These spaces
are central to MulfingerŐs site-specific approach, forefronting existing contexts
in the content of her pieces, while fulfilling the notion that the audience completes
the work. Rather than presuming the neutrality of a given space, Mulfinger posits
the sociological, political, and formal/spatial contexts of architecture and
history with the objects and text that she chooses to incorporate. Writing in
Art & Design, John Stathatos describes MulfingerŐs work as a response to Ňthe
complex, fragmentary character of the contemporary city and the way this affects
its inhabitants.Ó This approach can be seen in much of her work since 1989; Common
Knowledge, an etched glass panels installed in St. Pancras Station, London, with
collected European jokes in their original languages; I Battuti Bianchi, in Carignano,
Italy, that fuses the history of the architectural site with the human desire
for ascendance; Armory as Cathedral, Beyond the Visible Spectrum in Pasadena
transforms locally discarded red and blue clothing into pseudo stained glass;
and The Fictive City and Its Real Estate: The Tale of the Transcontinental Railroad
illuminates a specific history of urban decline and renewal in the Los Angeles
Chinatown(s) using the background of railroad construction in the West. (For
this work, Norman Klein collaborated with his essay, ŇThe Three ChinatownsÓ).
Her most recent works include a site-specific installation that draws attention
to the historic dilapidated Pasadena YWCA and an examination of the most popular
swimming pool shapes of Southern California.
Publications have included articles in both art magazines and national newspapers
including Flash Art (Italian version), Art and Design, Contemporary Visual Art,
Untitled, The Economist, The Times (London), The Guardian, La Stampa, the Los
Angeles Times, and regular coverage in LondonŐs Time-Out Magazine under the direction
of Sarah Kent. In 1994, a monograph of her work was published with an essay written
by Kate Bush, (included in this packet), now Director of Exhibitions at the Barbican
Art Centre and Richard Dyer, artist and critic. Radio interviews include BBC
Cambridge, Radio 1, Austria, and a video interview has been published in Paris
with Le Cube, Vimeo, and Daily Motion. Most recently, she has collaborated with
artist/writer Stephanie Washburn on a conference paper for ATINER in Athens and
a talk for the UCSB Art Dept. Symposium based on their mutual interest in discourse
surrounding humor in contemporary art. Mulfinger is currently developing a new
iteration of Common Knowledge that updates the series into an interactive, (street
collection), digital format. She teaches a broad range of undergraduate courses
as well as graduate seminars at the Dept. of Art and the College of Creative
Studies, UCSB, focusing on spatial and sculptural topics in the formation of
significant art.
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