Joelle Jensen earned both her MFA in Visual Arts and her MA in Contemporary Art Theory and Criticism at Purchase College, State University of New York in 2006. The Magenta Foundation recently selected her work for publication and several images were featured in Flash Forward in October 2008. Her recent solo exhibition, Interiors, took place at Wall Space in Seattle, WA in April. Her work reveals a dark sense of humor as she examines family life, memory and loss.

Jensen received several awards for her photographs, including a darkroom residency at the Camera Club of New York, a Two-Year Fellowship from the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, First Place from Juror Paul Kopeikin at the Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle, WA, and Juror's Choice from Leslie Bellavance at Weber University, UT.

Her work has been published in

Esquire Russia

( 2008),

PDN’s Photo Annual

(2007) and

Photo Review

magazine (2006 and 2008). Jensen has contributed articles to

NY Arts Magazine

and

HotShoe International

. Curatorial projects include “Posing” at Henry Street Settlement Abrons Art Center in Manhattan and “Mad Cow: Absurdity & Anxiety in Contemporary Culture” at NURTUREart Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.

Interiors

I express feelings about memory, loss and familial relationships by photographing the interior spaces of my relatives’ homes. The majority of the series comes from my parents’ home where they retired in order to take care of my grandmother who has since passed away. Currently, there are two additional locations in the series. The homes belong to my husband's grandparents, with the second home in Darien, Connecticut and the third (like my parents) is in Florida.

I take an analytical stance to examine spaces filled with emotion, distance, grief and love. The simple geometry of the compositions provides a counterweight to the melancholia. Fortunately, the images are also filled with a sense of humor as issues of cultural and economic status, fashion, adolescence and old age haunt the photographs within the photographs. I accentuate the space of memory by mirroring it with windows, curtains, vents and frames. I draw a parallel to the experience of memory by mixing natural and artificial lighting, casting various shades of pastels into otherwise white spaces.

wall space gallery | 600 First Avenue, suite 623 | Seattle, WA 98104 | 805.637.3898 | gallery@wall-spacegallery.com

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