Ginger Wolfe-Suarez (born 1980) is an American artist, writer, and curator who has worked out of Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Atlanta. Her practice includes
installation art
Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often calle ...
, sculpture, drawings, and artist books.
[Buckley, Annie]
"Critic’s Pick: Ginger Wolfe-Suarez at Ltd Los Angeles,"
''Artforum'', May 2011. Retrieved March 7. 2019.[Hamilton, Julia.]
"Ginger Wolfe-Suarez: Theory of a Family,"
''ArtSlant'', February 2010. Retrieved March 7. 2019. She has been featured in exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and throughout the United States, at venues including Silverman Gallery,
Luckman Fine Arts Complex,
[The Luckman Fine Arts Comple]
"Ginger Wolfe-Suarez and Primitivo Suarez,"
Exhibits, 2015. Retrieved March 10, 2019. Southern Exposure,
[Southern Exposure]
"Uncertainty of the Expanded Field,"
Events. Retrieved March 10, 2019.[Smith, Kara.]
The Corporeal Qualities of the Yarn
" ''ArtSlant'', December 2011. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA, formerly abbreviated as BAM/PFA) are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director fro ...
(BAMPFA),
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is a multi-disciplinary contemporary arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that celebrates local, nati ...
,
[ArtDaily]
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts events
''ArtDaily''. Retrieved March 10, 2019. and
High Desert Test Sites.
[Hieggelke, Jan]
"Review: Primitivo Suarez and Ginger Wolfe,"
''Newcity'', December 13, 2007. Retrieved March 10, 2019. Her work has been reviewed in ''
Artforum
''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...
'',
[Berardini, Andrew]
“Ginger Wolfe-Suarez: A Thing Repeated Is Not Always the Same,”
''Artforum'', May 2015. Retrieved March 7. 2019. the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...
'',
[Mizota, Sharon]
"Ginger Wolfe-Suarez engages the sense of smell,"
''Los Angeles Times'', April 3, 2015. Retrieved March 10, 2019. ''
San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The pap ...
'',
[Desmarais, Charles]
"A Final Goodbye to Summer Art Exhibitions,"
''San Francisco Chronicle'', August 2018. Retrieved March 10, 2019. ''
Sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
'',
[Melendez, Franklin. Exhibition review, ''Sculpture'', 2010.] ''
Art Papers
''ART PAPERS'' is an Atlanta-based bimonthly art magazine and non-profit organization dedicated to the examination of art and culture in the world today. Its mission is to provide an independent and accessible forum for the exchange of perspecti ...
''
[Gess, Richard. Review, ''ART PAPERS'', Oct. 2002.] and ''
Art Practical
''Art Practical'' is an online arts magazine based in San Francisco producing arts criticism, essays, quarterly issues, and programming related to contemporary art and visual culture in the Bay Area and beyond.
History
The magazine was establish ...
'',
[Mallouk, Elyse]
"Review: Theory of a Family,"
''Art Practical'', February 2010. Retrieved March 10, 2019. among other publications.
[Baker, Kenneth]
Review, "Schrödinger's Cats,"
''SF Gate'', August 2013. Retrieved March 10, 2019. Wolfe-Suarez draws on the traditions of
feminist sculpture, Latin American installation art,
conceptualism
In metaphysics, conceptualism is a theory that explains universality of particulars as conceptualized frameworks situated within the thinking mind. Intermediate between nominalism and realism, the conceptualist view approaches the metaphysical c ...
, and
minimalism
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...
in works that function phenomenologically to explore the perception of space and materials, body-object relationships, ephemerality, and negotiations of memory.
[Bad at Sports]
" Interview with Aaron GM and Ginger Wolfe-Suarez,"
'' Art Practical'', May 18, 2011. Retrieved March 10, 2019. ''Artforum'' reviewer Annie Buckley described her show at Ltd Los Angeles as one in which "the cerebral
asincidental to the sensory," with subtle images, fleeting reflections and lingering scents indicating the intangible.
Life and career
Wolfe-Suarez earned a BFA from the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum an ...
(2002) and an MFA from the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
(2009), where she was a recipient of the Eisner Award.
[Diane Rosenstein]
" A Thing Repeated Is Not Always All The Same,"
Exhibition materials, 2015. Retrieved March 10, 2019. In 2014, she received a residency at SOMA, in Mexico City.
[SOMA]
Ginger y Primitivo Suarez-Wolf
Residencies. Retrieved March 10, 2019. Between 2009 and 2012, she taught foundations and drawing, studio classes, art criticism, and art theory in the graduate program at
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximatel ...
, the University of California, Berkeley and
Mills College
Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was r ...
.
[Reyes, Isiah]
"Art Gallery Highlights Spatial Relationships,"
''El Vaquero'', September 29, 2011, Retrieved March 10, 2019. Wolfe-Suarez is married to the artist, Primitivo Suarez. They have collaborated on architectural objects and installations, and together co-founded The Critique Program with artist Robert Olsen in 2012.
She also founded (2002) and co-edited the Los Angeles-based art publication ''InterReview Journal''.
[Farrugia Mallory]
"May 2008, Book It! @ New Langton Arts,"
''WhiteHot Magazine'', 2008. Retrieved March 10, 2019. Her writings on art have been published internationally in ''
Art Papers
''ART PAPERS'' is an Atlanta-based bimonthly art magazine and non-profit organization dedicated to the examination of art and culture in the world today. Its mission is to provide an independent and accessible forum for the exchange of perspecti ...
'', ''
Sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
'', and ''
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962.
History
The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publ ...
'', among other publications.
[ArtDaily]
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts events
''ArtDaily''. Retrieved March 10, 2019. She lives with her husband and two children in Atlanta, Georgia.
Work
Wolfe-Suarez's early sculptures and installations were made from commonplace materials and use feminist and minimalist vocabularies to explore the psychology and perception of space.
[ltd los angeles. "Memory Objects," Exhibition materials. Los Angeles: ltd los angeles, 2010.] Her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, “Memory Objects” at ltd (2010), combined built and cast objects, mirror fragments, hand-built light boxes, string that was dipped in or coated with scented oils, and a pile of dried mint leaves that operated in concert to create an open-ended temporal and phenomenological viewer experience.
The installation included components that had to be walked under and around. Reviewing her 2011 show, "Proximetric," critic
Andrew Berardini
Andrew Berardini (born 1982) is an American writer known for his work as a visual art critic and curator in Los Angeles. Described as "the most elegant of all art critic cowboys", Berardini works primarily between genres, which he describes as "qu ...
wrote, “These works of art are not things to be perceived, but they are indivisible from the act of perception, the emotions and sensations they engender."
[ArtSlant]
"Proximetric,"
''ArtSlant'', 2011. Retrieved March 10, 2019. Wolfe-Suarez's shows “Theory of a Family” (Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, 2010) and "Both Are True" (Southern Exposure, Los Angeles, 2011) made similar use of disparate objects, sound and scent in tenuous relationship to body, space and memory.
Artist-critic
Walter Robinson described the former show as "private, mysterious, intimate";
[ Robinson, Walter]
"San Francisco Sketchy,"
''artnet'', March 30, 2010. Retrieved March 10, 2019. other reviewers compared her work's combination of spareness with symbolic, psychological, and narrative qualities to the work of
Eva Hesse
Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 – May 29, 1970) was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 196 ...
,
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (; 25 December 191131 May 2010) was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a varie ...
,
Doris Salcedo
Doris Salcedo (b. 1958) is a Colombian-born visual artist and sculptor.["Doris Salcedo"](_blank)
Art 21, Retrieved 1 ...
and
Lee Ufan
Lee Ufan ( Korean: 이우환, Hanja: 李禹煥, born 1936 in Haman County, in South Kyongsang province in Korea) is a Korean minimalist painter and sculptor artist and academic, honored by the government of Japan for having "contributed to ...
.
In the installation "A Thing Repeated Is Not Always All The Same" (Diane Rosenstein, Los Angeles, 2015), Wolfe-Suarez combined basic materials—light, shadow, scent, wood, rocks, yarn, mirrors, walls—and repeated imagery in distinct works designed as an interrelated composition.
For ''Color Fields'', she created "walls" of stretched, hand-dyed yarn dipped in scented oils and strung at angles across corners or between walls and floors in an exploration of perceptual space, mood, and memory.
''Los Angeles Times'' critic Sharon Mizota described them as "breathing, architectural monochromes" whose "light, shadow, volume and reflection play off one another, dissolving expected notions of space and carving out new ones," similar to the effect of a sunbeam on a room.
The show also featured a series of recurring images of transience (a bouquet, a sunset), mounted with different materials and arrangements that investigated the relationships between symbol, sentiment, experience and context.
In her most recent work, Wolfe-Suarez engages feminist and process-based traditions, using experimental materials such as wax, scents, and dyes extracted from ocean plants, saltwater and shells. The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' described a work in this vein, ''Breath of Work'' (2018), as "a landscape-like reverie" whose materials suggest an "alchemical element."
Writing
Wolfe-Suarez's writings on art have been published internationally in ''Art Papers'', ''Sculpture'', ''Cement'', ''
N. paradoxa
N is the fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet.
N or n may also refer to:
Mathematics
* \mathbb, the set of natural numbers
* N, the field norm
* N for ''nullae'', a rare Roman numeral for zero
* n, the size of a statistical sample
Sci ...
'', ''Bridge'', and'' InterReview'', which she founded in 2002 and co-edited.
In 2004, she conducted one of the few interviews with conceptual artist,
Michael Asher, concerning his practice of
institutional critique; it will be republished in an anthology on Asher's work by ''MIT Press'' (forthcoming).
[Wolfe-Suarez, Ginger]
"Michael Asher Interview,"
from ''InterReview'', 2004, republished in Michael Asher Anthology (forthcoming), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Retrieved March 10, 2019. She has also published artist projects and interviews with contemporary artists, such as
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville (born 1940) is an American graphic designer, artist and educator whose work reflects her belief in the importance of feminist principles and user participation in graphic design. In 1990 she became the director of t ...
,
Suzanne Lacy
Suzanne Lacy (born 1945) is an American artist, educator, writer, and professor at the USC Roski School of Art and Design. She has worked in a variety of media, including installation, video, performance, public art, photography, and art books, ...
and
Leslie Labowitz,
Daniel Joseph Martinez
Daniel Joseph Martinez (born 1957) is a Los Angeles-based contemporary artist.
Early life
Martinez grew up in Lennox, California, a working-class area of Los Angeles County near Los Angeles International Airport. After high school, he attended th ...
,
Dario Robleto
Dario Robleto (born 1972) is an American transdisciplinary artist, researcher, writer, teacher and “citizen-scientist”. His research-driven practice results in intricately handcrafted objects that reflect his exploration of music, popular cultu ...
, and
Haim Steinbach
Haim Steinbach (born Rehovot, Israel, 1944) is an Israeli- American artist, based in New York City. His work consists of arrangements of everyday objects, presented in “Displays” and shelves of his own making.
Life and work
Since the late 197 ...
.
[Wolfe-Suarez, Ginger. "In conversation with Sheila Levrant de Bretteville,]
"InterReview 08''
Los Angeles: G. Wolfe, 2008.[Lacy, Suzanne ''Leaving Art: Writings on Performance, Politics, and Publics, 1974–2007'', Chapel Hill, SC: Duke University Press, 2010, p. 352.][Wolfe-Suarez, Ginger. "The Performance Archive: Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz, ''InterReview 07'', Los Angeles: G. Wolfe, 2007.]
References
External links
Ginger Wolfe-Suarez official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolfe-Suarez Ginger
1980 births
Living people
Artists from New Jersey
People from Cranbury, New Jersey
American installation artists
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni