JENNIFER ELSTER
TAKE HEED
Multi-Medium Art Exhibition
Including a special installation of the artist’s work with David Bowie
An artist’s apocalyptic visions take an obsessive turn.
“I love this show. Strong and unusual.”
–Anthony Haden Guest
Two hands holding up a protest sign “When is it Enough When We’re Dead?” but the hands have no body, 2015, 2020.
"...she feels the wider, macro pain and trauma of the world deeply."
--Kurt McVey, Whitehot Magazine
A journey through the apocalyptic predictions of an anxious artist with a sparkling creepiness. Evoking urgent themes, eerie prescience, and strokes of mania, the artist probes our current times with a critical analysis, offering new insight. Amid the jungle of construction lights illuminating the artwork, and in what feels like a surreal, cinematic experience, the exhibition speaks to our complex times with directness. The exhibit encapsulates both rage and dark humor and fights injustice, while the dates of the artworks document the foresight.
Jennifer Elster, native New Yorker and longtime fixture on the downtown scene, infuses her polymorphic creative energy and deep angst into a cinematic, multi-medium art exhibition, which takes over the 4,000-square-foot Tribeca space. After entering through towering burgundy curtains, the viewer begins a strange journey amidst sixteen foot Corinthian columns through assemblages, paintings, and photographs—apocalyptic predictions infused with the artist’s obstinate dark optimism. Dangling ceiling and duct work that has gone astray loom in the 19th-century structure that houses the gallery. Everything is part of the show.
Paintings that beckon and warn. Art pieces that one must puzzle together to figure. Portraits provoking surreal realizations and desperate fear. And with comedy and horror, pathos and style, she weaves in mementos from her earlier life and career, including an installation and artifacts from her avant-garde styling work with David Bowie.
“Multi-dimensional bliss”
– Benjamin Scmidt, The Knockturnal
In a corner, there is an installation of a photograph that Elster styled of David Bowie in 1995 for his 1. Outside album. In 2020, she painted on the original photograph, taken by John Scarisbrick, and is now presenting it in a hand-cut web, interwoven with artifacts from the original shoot: her cut up piece he was wearing, the bullet belt, the knife—all making their public debuts.
"Serrated rage!"
–Tyler Nesler, The Interlocutor
Each artwork is placed with methodical precision.
Shrilling foresight offers reflection in this exhibition of apocalyptic warnings.
Warhead appears to reflect a cosmic scream. The artist’s anguish is reflected in the vivid brushstrokes in military olive and black, painted at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, 2022.
“It feels really good outside,” says the multi-hyphenate Elster, a perennial New York spirit. “I love it outside. There’s so much bliss. At the same time, there’s so many things going on in the world we’re neglecting to pay attention to, it’s horrifying. This show, in very poignant and distilled ways, is articulating that,” says the artist.
The exhibition is as if an alternative universe, where awareness of our current world crisis is all around, and yet, perhaps from the relief of kin concerns, an odd serenity abounds.
Now Elster's work will be available to purchase for the first time at
ChannelELSTER.com/art-gallery and will be on Artsy. Most of the paintings are spoken
for, but there are collectible Limited Editions Gaeclee canvases and Digital C Prints that will
be available upon proposal.
Stop by the J.ELSTER gift shop in The Development Gallery, where you'll find cut-pieces,
magnets and buttons of the artwork, t-shirts, and handmade, raw luxury pouches.
JENNIFER ELSTER
Jennifer Elster is an artist, writer, filmmaker, photographer, performer, and musician. Her work, in all mediums, uses language and images to pierce the truth in direct and unexpected ways. With street edge and sophistication, Elster approaches her art with an untrained, raw, and aggressive style all her own, evident in both of her solo art exhibitions, The Retrospective of an Extroverted Recluse and The Wake the F*ck Up Show. In her work, it is as if she is a watchdog for society, worried for us all. She has stood up for many social justice issues over the years, from protecting the vote to writing an online campaign supporting net neutrality with Gloria Steinem. She has released the first songs from her upcoming album of love and experimental songs and performed art at the New Museum, signs and symbols, Catinca Tabacaru, Central Booking, and The Development. In her youth, growing up in the then perilous streets of Manhattan, Elster put herself through college at NYU by styling David Bowie, Chloe Sevigny, Trent Reznor, and others, and she also worked at Conde Nast—she became known for her aesthetic and wild imagination. Elster began her work in film. She went on to write, direct, produce and star in the feature film Particles of Truth, which played on Netflix and in New Voices on The Sundance Channel. She created her two upcoming film series, In the Woods (and Elsewhere) and Into the Cave (and The Mad Pacer) –a glimpse into the bizarre landscape of her films began as an online cinematic art experience, ItW Pathway, which featured the late Glenn O’Brien, Jorgen Leth, Will Oldham, and others, with original vocalizations written by Elster and performed by Yoko Ono. Elster was born and raised in New York City, where she continues to live and work.
For further inquiries please contact AtachiAtTheDevelopment@gmail.com or call 212-321-2726
@JenniferElster
#TheDevelopmentGallery
ChannelELSTER.com
