Jennifer Nehrbass: Pioneer Project

LOCATION: Visions West Contemporary - 2605 Walnut St

EVENT CATEGORIES: Art Events | OPEN: Exhibits/Studios/Shops | Buy Art

UPCOMING DATES AND TIMES

visit website

Events Calendar

Jennifer Nehrbass's solo exhibition, Pioneer Project, is showing concurrently with Madeleine Bialke's Mothers and Daughters.

It is without a doubt that women and their contribution to western expansions have been widely underrepresented in history. What if history was written from a female perspective? What if women were the first pioneers of the west? Jennifer Nehrbass's current exhibition, Pioneer Project, sets out to rewrite history by viewing it from the female perspective. Nehrbass's imaginative work takes us back in time when women were the first pioneers to settle the American West. The body of work includes landscapes, portraiture, and Dada inspired sculpture. Nehrbass takes the viewer on a visual odyssey from familiar to fantastical locations all the while reexamining the concept of manifest destiny and American history.

The landscapes in Pioneer Project are like exploring nature in a dream. Nothing is real yet everything is so familiar you can almost recall being there. The "new" western landscape are fragments of both real and imagined environments - a majestic sky, a mountain range in Wyoming, a river in Europe. Nehrbass's idealized landscapes are the ultimate mash-up of locations. These artificial locations contribute to a new reimaging of the American West.

Nehrbass cleverly approaches each portrait in Pioneer Project by using a matte black background, like Dutch portraiture, creating a psychological space for the subjects and the spectator. The formally posed, almost regal, portraits are cloaked in highly patterned textiles and often appear to be in conversation with one another or in direct gaze with the onlooker. Nehrbass, *"contemporizes her characters to be a perfect representation of how she perceives they should be remembered in history." The hyper realistic facial expressions and gestures of the females serve as universal visuals cues to the wonder of the unknown as well as the hardships that people would have faced.

*Big Life: Tucker, Lucy Lee, Western Herstory, Reimagined, pg 90 - 92

(image: Shadowland, 2020, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in)

The exhibition is free and open to the public, Tuesday - Saturday, 10:30 am to 5:30 pm. Private appointments are also available.