Jamie Isenstein, Unlimited Ping Pong Yawn
The ICA presents a solo body of new work, including new video installations commissioned with UTC students, by Jamie Isenstein, with exhibition essay by Dr. Isabelle Loring Wallace. The exhibit will be on display Nov. 4-Dec. 16 with an artist talk and opening reception Friday, Nov. 4. The artist talk will be in Benwood Auditorium at 5 p.m. and the reception will be in the ICA Galleries from 6-8 p.m.
The Infinite Expansion of the Rubber Band Mansion is an exhibition of new work by multi-media artist Ms. Isenstein, wherein she proposes a “disco-centric” model of the universe through new sculpture and video (utilizing maps, clocks, candles and lamps). Throughout her work, Ms. Isenstein plays with the push and pull between belief and fact, magic and science, artifice and nature, and life and death to ask questions about perception, the nature of reality, and how most humans understand their own existence and the things around them.
Despite previous theories to the contrary, Ms. Isenstein's model refuses the idea that humans are a minuscule speck in an unfathomably vast unknown and are in fact, the center of the universe and the source from which all space, time and existence emanates. In this conception of the universe, each human is their own planet: spinning on their own, creating their own constellations. Like in Einstein’s universe, in Ms. Isenstein’s universe, time is still relative, but it is not neutral; rather it is controlled by humans.
This exhibition proudly debuts all new work since Ms. Isenstein's move to Portland, Or. from New York City, and two new video installations--a 12-channel video titled Candle Clock and a 2-channel video titled Unlimited Ping Pong (Yawn)--were commissioned by the ICA at UTC in 2022 and created with UTC students and area Chattanoogans.
About the artist
Ms. Isenstein’s multi-media work considers questions around perception, subjectivity and the slippery nature of both human and non-human existence. In her often humorous work, differences between fact and fiction, subject and object and life and death are often blurred. Whether using sculpture, video, performance, painting or photography to convey her intentions, at the heart of Ms. Isenstein’s work is a desire to probe the formation of knowledge, how we come to understand our world, and what it means to be human in our current economic system.
Ms. Isenstein’s work was recently on view at the at the Manif d’Art, La Biennale de Québec, Canada. She has also shown her work at the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU in New York City; The Whitney Museum of Art in New York City; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield CT; Atlanta Contemporary in Atlanta, GA; the South London Gallery, London, UK and and South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston-Salem, NC.
Ms. Isenstein holds a BA from Reed College, Portland (1998) and an MFA from Columbia University (2004). Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Reviews of Ms. Isenstein’s work have appeared in such publications as the New York Times, Contemporary, Art in America, and Modern Painters, among others. She lives and works in Portland, Or.