March 16th Reception

The March 16th reception of Take Heed was an evening of dynamic performances that played into the timeline of the art exhibited; each artifact’s date pieces together a reeling story of awareness, defiance, and insight of and about our times. The closing night reception was a night of unusual warmth and spontaneity that was just as unexpected as the space and exhibition itself. Special words and music by Jennifer Elster, Chief Dwaine Perry of the Ramapough Lenape Tribe, Heide Hatry and Jane LeCroy, Mike Handelman, and Nargiz Aliyarova.

Even the Fighters Won’t Want to Fight, 2016

Photograph, self-portrait, triptych

Digital C-Print, mounted

19h x 48w in

Limited Edition of 8

$12,500.00

Click here to read article

Photobook Mag:

How does your upbringing affect your work?

It’s who I am. At a young age, I began creating in all mediums, and I’ve never stopped. I was very sensitive and intuitive, never trained. I was also always on the lookout for evil, and I have carried that astute detection into adulthood. I am worried for us all.

Who are your biggest artistic influences?

My thoughts are a great inspiration to me.  And my feelings. The people I love deeply inspire me. Regarding artists, #BobDylan has been an important influence on me since childhood. My dad played #Dylan as a way of communicating with me during hard times. I also had a very powerful moment with #Picasso’s #Guernica. And the world inspires me.

Could you tell us about your favorite artistic medium to work in?

Writing. It's the most accurate. I've written obsessively since a child. I hope I will go out that way too.

Where do you find inspiration?

From within and my life. And I am, of course, triggered by the injustices in the world. I don't look for inspiration per se.

When is your favorite time of day to create?

I love the early morning. #Coffee. Floating. Thinking. Then…

Describe how art is important to society?

Art gets to be important to society when the people who have been given the keys for amplification pay attention to what is valuable. Art relieves pain, and when it does its job, it inspires you and opens your mind.

What motivates you to create?

My feelings. I’m an intense person, and it’s my outlet. It’s how I cope and how I have fun.”

“Pitchdark clarity”

“The Development Gallery is Elster’s gallery and Take Heed is her painfully timely show.”

“Take Heed, an unusual show of work by Jennifer Elster, occupies The Development Gallery, a sizeable street level space at 75 Leonard, which exemplifies the post-industrial chic of the Cast Iron District, its slender columns with Corinthian capitals reaching up to fat pipes swaddled in silver paper on the perforated ceiling. Elster’s art is hung or pasted on the brick walls, stands upon plinths, and is laid flat on the floor and it is variegated, including brushy black abstractions, pieces in which the brushwork has been morphed into a sign, such as a question mark, and pieces in which real life materials have been embedded.

Truculent or fearful signage crackles throughout.”

“They watched a storm of rubble falling from the sky.”

— Anthony Haden Guest, Whitehot Magazine. Visit here to read full article

“As a teenager in a very dangerous neighbourhood you had to watch out or you would get ... damaged,” (says the artist)

“I saw the Towers go down, I saw people jumping out.  I saw everything. Our electricity and plumbing and everything went down. I said out loud it’s a terrorist attack. I don’ t think I ever said the word terrorist before. I never thought about terrorists, nothing.  And I said Goodbye to my life. “

It changes the way that you see. It exacerbated my worries about how bad things could get in the world. Living through it like that frames and shapes the way you see the present and the future from that moment on. These things can happen.”

People aren’t great at adapting to change. They freak out, they get scared, and just want to go back go to their normal lives, But it's much more powerful to be fluid. Things change. Things happen, things continue to happen. Just be fluid with it."

—Jennifer Elster, artist

For his album, 1. Outside, David wanted to recreate Rudolf Schwarzkogler’s 2 Aktion (1965) so we did, and here we are.
Come by The Development Gallery to see Ramona, who is another character that had back story, but what I brought forth was so me. Savage. The other characters were more defined in practical measures ie. Store Owner. Baby Grace too. Yeah Ramona and Baby Grace. Though I love them all.
And how fun to have worked on the artwork for his conceptual art album that plays ever strong today.
Take Heed art exhibition
#TheDevelopmentGallery

If you’d like to become a client of my artwork you can request a catalog of my limited edition works that are available.

1. Outside album was photographed by the wonderful John Scarisbrick who was chosen by Bowie for the unique energy that he brought (and brings) to his photographs.

In celebration of Bowie’s born day, the original photograph of Ramona, taken by John, is in one of the windows of the gallery, between the Corinthium columns, and should not be missed! And then come inside for more.

Jennifer Elster Taps Into Visceral Memory With New Show at The Development Gallery

“Jennifer Elster has always been a deeply reactionary artist. Whether it is rebutting (or accepting) seismic shifts in the culture or simply responding to a question posed or a happening taking place, her multi-modal replies are always candid and fizzling with raw, determined energy.

Elster has always consumed with world as anyone else does- receiving and interpreting on an on-going basis. But rather than letting things happen to her passively, she posits and responds urgently and instinctually. Stepping into the Take Heed show, now on view at The Development Gallery in Tribeca, one feels as if they’re stepping outside for the first time after an apocalyptic event.

Crystalizing the flurry of cultural norms that have been introduced in the past two years, Take Heed is the first honest retrospective of work that was created or heavily reconsidered under the shadow of an on-going global pandemic and an affronting war.

Taking shape amid the soaring columns and roiled tin roof and wood of the Tribeca space, the show feels like a shell of what once was and a space being repopulated once more. The dust has settled but hasn’t yet been swept away. A mount of KN95 masks, a signature element of the deepest valley of the COVID-19 pandemic, are positioned on a pedestal, taking on the performance of a future relic. In fact, preservation seems particularly important to Elster in this show, with many works being encased in plexiglas or wood.

A series of large-scale self-portraits, originally executed in 2016, featured Elster in military fatigues and gas masks. The works, faraway and innocuous at the time of their execution, are revisited within the collective gasp and gaze of an egregious war taking place in Ukraine. Have no doubt, conflict rages globally. But distance can breed unfounded comfort.

Elster’s instinctual quips, done in chiseled marker, are not flailing in conspiracy, but are bright-red warning lights. “Warhead” (2022) is one of the most delicate and thought-provoking pieces the artist has completed in recent memory, adding to an ongoing series of “head” works that address, in the most abstract way, the awe-inspiring dynamism of the human condition.

Unlike previous shows, Elster is no longer angry. She’s done defending herself. Now she is a communicator. Her prophesies have come true and she’s been prepared for a long while. Now she invites the broader world to involve themselves. Of course, there is humor. There is realism. Elster remains as buoyant as ever, motivated by- believe it or not- absolute optimism.

Viewers will relish in the opportunity to revisit one of Elster’s most remarkable achievements: the styling of the late David Bowie. In a new installation, the image, which is celebrated for its deeply collaborative and improvised instant, enters into a new territory of multi-dimensional bliss by way of cut web around the enlarged image. “Bowie and I went very deep. I wanted to pay tribute and incorporate but not overwhelm the show.”

— Benjamin Schmidt, The Knocturnal Visit here to read full article

“Serrated rage”

“Take Heed is a more dire, and to me personally, worn out version of pay attention --with punctuation. I think the exhibition cries out for an audience to hear, to pay attention, and yet the exhibition is a strange and somehow optimistic excursion. Cinematic too.

I know what it is to relentlessly try to open people's minds to what they don't want to be conscious of.  That is no longer a role I burden myself with. I gave up on that. Now I'm able to enjoy my life, accept where others are at, and engage, and that in itself is liberating. This exhibit meets the person where they are at and takes them to different places. It inspires revelations.

I am meticulous about the placement of each piece. The exhibit is a proper art exhibition, but also feels like an intense mental experience for the participant.  I put footprints out for people to follow, but no one does. People just start exploring.

The aesthetic is a perfect disorder for this body of work. I will forever love the image of this exhibition in my mind.”  —Jennifer Elster

Some excerpts from The Interlocutor interview. Visit here to read full article

“Take Heed is quite clearly the greatest answer to the ongoing contagion of cry-for-help activists, usually young and culturally, environmentally, politically, spiritually traumatized, vandalizing famous, undoubtedly priceless works of art in the name of climate and economic awareness and other nodes of social justice.” 

“These kids are splattering Van Goghs, I’m splattering this space with things people should be thinking about and considering,” she told me a couple weeks before the opening at 75 Leonard Street.

“For artists like Elster, meaning, not factory made cogs in the institutional art complex, the exact aloof, gaslighting corporate complex these young protesters are raging against, she feels the wider, macro pain and trauma of the world deeply.”

(Elster) “attacking, almost destroying the canvas with an obvious disdain for the commercial art object. She’s destroying Art as it is. “

“The Development can and will serve as a true safe space for the young and old alike; a proactive bridge between the potential fine art Campbell Soup assailants of the recent past and near future and those who want to protect and preserve all that is priceless.”

“Elster reinvigorated her Downtown punk jam, which shares the title of The Wake the F*ck Up Show(think the love-child of Henry Rollins and Tinker Bell) and rocked out in a hybrid of poetry, spoken word, and frenetic performance art, pausing frequently to share extremely human, often hilarious musings about the writing process, ancillary anxieties, often connecting the dots to the cyclical nature of art and war. The ultimate, supreme hyper-metal moment, was the grand finale of this jam,”

Words here will struggle to attest, but great performance art always has a “had to be there" quality.”

—Kurt McVey, Whitehot Magazine Read more here

“I love this show. Strong and unusual.

It reminds me of the shows from the 60’s, except it’s more serious. It’s deadly serious.”

–Anthony Haden Guest (art critic, artist)

“Take Heed invites living humans from across generations to wake up to the harsh realities of the present moment, without ignoring the past or abandoning hope for the future.”

—Kurt McVey (art writer)

"Back in 2016, Elster laid out her deflated, hollow, dead-playing military green, industrial gas mask and biohazard suit in front of Jeffrey Deitch’s former Wooster Street gallery, which was showing Ai Weiwei: Laundromat at the time, a multimedia commentary on the global refugee crisis, designed by the artist while under soft, secret detention in Beijing in 2011. Elster reminds us again that there have long been performative confrontations to art, and the crises continue."