“Good art should be inclusive rather than exclusive."
Kaleidoscopic experiments in visual perception, steered by the complex systems of nature.
Jen Stark harnesses the power of line and repetition to create technicolour works that vibrate with kinetic energy. Her iterative patterns appear across multiple mediums including painting, installation, sculpture and animation. Op Artists like Bridget Riley and Marina Apollonio are key inspirations, as well as the Finish Fetish artists of 1960s Los Angeles. Consciousness and spirituality are central themes in Stark’s practice. Mono Chrome (2017), for instance, is a large wooden relief made of swirling rings of white, grey and black. While each individual tone is flat, together they shift, flo...
Jen Stark harnesses the power of line and repetition to create technicolour works that vibrate with kinetic energy. Her iterative patterns appear across multiple mediums including painting, installation, sculpture and animation. Op Artists like Bridget Riley and Marina Apollonio are key inspirations, as well as the Finish Fetish artists of 1960s Los Angeles. Consciousness and spirituality are central themes in Stark’s practice. Mono Chrome (2017), for instance, is a large wooden relief made of swirling rings of white, grey and black. While each individual tone is flat, together they shift, flow and merge, encouraging viewers to lose themself in an altered state of perception - much like meditation, or an acid trip.
Stark bases her work on the mathematical precision of nature. To create her works, she often looks at images of structures found in nature like fractals, mimetic topographies and sacred geometries are mimicked. In addition, The Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Sequence appear throughout her practice, in the shell-like forms of works such as Centrifugal (2010), or in recurring motifs of sinking, flower-like black holes in works like Abyss (2011). Through these parallels, Stark elucidates how the big and the small often echo one another - toying with perception and bending senses to dizzying effect.
Bio
Jen Stark was born in 1983 in Miami, Florida and now practices in Los Angeles, California.
Career
Many will have encountered the artist’s psychedelic murals and installations - with a host of prominent commissions including Facebook’s California Headquarters, Miami International Airport and Florida’s Hard Rock Stadium.
Did you know?
A single sculpture can take months to finish. Stark cuts and assembles everything by hand, layer by wafer thin layer, wearing mittens and padding her scalpel with cotton balls to protect her fingers!
