Life and career
Mulfinger was born in Pasadena, California in 1961. While attending Stanford University (BA, Studio Art, 1983), she traveled to Florence, Italy in 1980, an experience that shifted her early art from painting to sculpture focused on the body, built environment and history. In 1983, she moved to West Berlin, where she studied with expatriate sculptor Shinkichi Tajiri at Berlin University of the Arts, Hochschule der Künste, became friends with Edward Kienholz, Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, explored found objects, and had her first solo show (Endart Gallery, 1987). After working on installation art during graduate studies at the Royal College of Art (MA, Sculpture, 1989), Mulfinger remained in London, gaining institutional (Arts Council of Great Britain and Unilever Sculpture awards) and critical recognition for shows at the Flaxman Gallery,Dyer, Richard. "Jane Mulfinger: Lost for Words," ''Art Monthly'', London: Flaxman Gallery, 1991. Camden Arts Centre,Kent, Sarah. "Northern Adventures," ''Time Out'', London', October 7, 1992, p. 43. Southampton Museum of Art,Stathatos, John. "Fotofeis," ''Portfolio'', No. 18, pp. 13-22, 1993. and the Mayor Gallery,Courtney, Cathy. "In the Public or Private Domain," ''Art Monthly'', September 1994, p. 179. among others. In 1994, Mulfinger moved to Santa Barbara, California to accept a teaching appointment at UCSB. She continued to exhibit widely, with solo shows at Franklin Furnace Archive (New York, 1995), Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow, 1995),Cooper, Emmanuel. "Boxer," ''Contemporary Art'', January 1996. Galerie Guido Carbone (Turin, 1997–2008),Beatrice, Luca. ''Questo Mondo é Fantastico: Ventanni con Guido Carbone''. Exhibition catalogue essay, Milan: Electa, 2008. Mayor Gallery,The Mayor GalleryWork and reception
Mulfinger has worked with a wide range of materials, media and strategies; her approach has been likened to "an alchemist [who] turns the mundane and banal into something extraordinary."Berning, Dominic. "Foreword," ''Jane Mulfinger: Selected Works 1988–1994'', London: Dominic Berning Fine Art and Nick Silver, 1994, p. 5. Critics such as Sacha Craddock suggest that a key strategy in her work involves putting everyday found objects and photographs—characterized by John Stathatos as "burdened with a haunting familiarity"—into disquieting or unfamiliar contexts and relationships in order to enable viewers to re-encounter them.Craddock, Sacha. Review, ''The Times London'', August 24, 1994.Stathatos, John. "Jane Mulfinger, Berning & Daw," ''Untitled'', Spring 1993, p. 14–5.Installation works
Mulfinger's early work probed collective experience, memory and history through found objects, images and interventions in architectural space. In installations such as ''Norris, R.E.'' and ''Rhoberts I'' (both 1989), she transformed exhibition spaces into sites of contemplation and optical effects by sewing locally collected, discarded clothing into tarpaulins that were fit over skylights, creating multi-colored panels resembling cathedral stained glass.''The Guardian''. Review, Jane Mulfinger at Camerawork, ''The Guardian'', August 1, 1990, p. B15. Beneath them, she altered the environments by painting walls, covering windows in fabric, and adding continuous benches or chairs. She sometimes projected images of seated individuals from different historical periods onto the benches.Morgan-Griffiths, Lauris. "Sole Searching," ''The Independent'' (London), July 21, 1994. Writers suggested that the work connected viewers to a cycle of life, death, presence and absence. Curator Kate Bush wrote, "unfolding through the passage of time, recuperable through memory, and incarnate in the objects we leave behind". In related works, Mulfinger explored monochromatic effects (the all-blue ''Deluge'', 1990), geographies, source materials and media. For ''Caught in Passing'' (1994)—done in residency at the New York Experimental Glass WorkshopNys, Rick. "Jane Mulfinger," ''Untitled'', London, October 1994.—she cast 22 pairs of rejected shoes from Salvation Army thrift stores in crystal, reconstituting the abject discards into an homage to unknown lives that ''The Independent'' (London) called a "beautifully surreal" work of "ghostly translucence."''The Independent'' (London)Text-based works
In the 1990s, Mulfinger frequently used found text and symbols in works that examined cultural history, the elusiveness of memory, and the simultaneous potency and limits of language.Jennings, Rose. "Fotofeis: Intimate Lives and Public & Private," ''Untitled'', Summer 1993, p. 20.Stoddart, Hugh. "chora," ''Contemporary Visual Arts'', April 2000, p. 58–9. In several series, she etched second-hand prescription eyeglasses with braille, Morse code or musical notation (''Spectacles'', 1991), poetry (''No Vacancy'', 1991),Hubbard, Sue and James Hillman, ''chora'', Exhibition materials, London: 30 Underwood Street, 2000. or first-hand accounts of intense sensory experiences (''Lost for Words'', 1991), often one word or phrase per lens; lined up on glass shelves, the dramatically lit, delicately shadowed pieces formed hard-to-read passages or paragraphs.Dyer, Richard. "Jane Mulfinger," ''Performance'', London 1991.Lillington, David. "Jane Mulfinger, Berning & Daw," ''Time Out'' London, December 30, 1992, p. 39. Critics, such as Sue Hubbard, described them as "subtle, witty and poetic" takes on the paradoxes of comprehension and mystery, illumination and blindness.Hubbard, Sue. "Beyond the Body," ''Contemporary Visual Arts'', November 1998, p. 40–5. Conceived against the backdrop of European Union negotiations and plans for the Channel Tunnel, Mulfinger's commissioned ''Common Knowledge'' (1992) featured thirteen ethnic jokes (in their original languages) about various Europeans, sandblasted onto glass panels installed without explanation in windows at the ticket office of St Pancras railway station, Saint Pancras Station, the planned Channel Tunnel terminus. Critic Sarah Kent judged the work's exposure of publicly excluded, but privately common xenophobic discourse as "both funny and offensive"; ''The Economist'' puzzled over its intent and mix of the aesthetically beautiful, timely and "rude." Mulfinger's interest in textual artifacts and private experience made public evolved into the ''Regrets'' project, which has delved into introspection and its potential for renewal through the collection and display of anonymous regrets.Arendt, PaulTime-related works
Mulfinger has created time-based installations employing movement, chance and performance and individual works based on transient natural processes. The latter include sequential etchings on glass that chart formations of clouds (''No Image No Matter'', 1998), volcanic debris (''Helen's Body'', 2001) and hurricanes (''Catarina, Fran, Hugo, Roslyn'', 2015). In the installations ''Device for Irregular Apparitions'' (1997), ''Filled with Content, Emptied with Form'' (1999), ''Dangling Modifier'' (1999) and ''Exacting Minutia While History Repeats'' (2004, 2007), she used down feathers blown blizzard-like by industrial fans within large, often Plexiglass, spaces to explore dematerialization, motion and light effects, the passage of time, and the rise and fall of history.Woodward, Josef. "10 Best Local Art Shows," ''Santa Barbara News Press'', December 26, 2004.Campitelli, Maria. "Aqua Vita et Mors," ''XIVth Edition of Rural Cultures Value and Memory'', Catalogue, Turin: Palazzo Bricherasio, 2004. With ''Mobile Apparitions'' (2003), Mulfinger took this work out of galleries and into the streets of Los Angeles, London and Venice, wheeling large glass tubes and life-sized aluminum and glass boxes that slowly propelled enclosed feathers to bring ethereal moments of contemplation and visual pleasure into contrast with the fast pace of city life.Artra Curatorial. "Jane Mulfinger," ''Fabrik Contemporary Art and Design'', January 23, 2017. ''The Drunkard Forwarned and the Swearer Caution'd'' (1999–2004) combined Mulfinger's interests in text, time, and interactivity in an installation consisting of a silver Spandex-like bouncy castle that viewers sat on, projected floating clouds, and dangling silver plaques engraved with medieval virtues and vices that tarnished at different rates in a consideration of historical moral systems.Los Angeles projects
Between 2004 and 2009, Mulfinger created two multi-disciplinary, research-oriented projects that examined Los Angeles as an object of urban decline and renewal.Pearlman, AlisonEducation career
Mulfinger has taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) since 1994, holding various positions in the College of Creative Studies and the Department of Art Studio, including Professor Spatial Studies/Sculpture since 2009 and Art Department Chair (2011–4). In addition to teaching courses in Proportional Analyses, Mobile Works, Installation and Arte Povera, and Material Strategies, she has created two new artist residency programs at UCSB, assisted in the implementation of the art building remodel, and co-curated the first major alumni exhibition, which included Mark di Suvero, Mary Heilmann, Suzanne Lacy, Ander Mikalson and Richard Serra. Mulfinger has also taught at the University of North Carolina (1997), Southampton Art Museum (UK, 1993) and Chelsea College of Art and Design (1992).Awards and recognition
Mulfinger has received artist-in-residencies from Beaconsfield (London, 2016), American Academy in Rome (2016), the Djerassi Artists Residency (2002), the National Glass Centre, (UK, 2001), the University of North Carolina (1997), and the New York Experimental Glass Workshop (1993).Djerassi Resident Art ProgramReferences
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