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The Print Perspective » Blog Archive » Nathaniel Stern and Jessica... http://www.theprintperspective.com/2010/12/nathaniel-stern-and-jes...

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Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninck-Ganger form like Voltron, part II

December 8th, 2010

When Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninck-Ganger collaborate the work has obvious traits from each of them but is nothing like either of their individual pieces. It is as if the combination of their forces they creates a third identity with its own individual style. “I had the idea of mounting prints on LCD screens well before I met Jessica,” said Stern. “I knew it had to be collaborative, I knew I needed to ﬁnd the right person to work with because I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it on my own, and then Jessica was a godsend.”

The two met through a staff meeting at UWM in 2008, and shortly after began working on a series of work that combines traditional printmaking with new media, resulting in a unique body of work named

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“Distill Life.” In these works video images are projected through translucent printed images to, in essence, create a moving print. Most of the printed images consist of contours and soft areas of tone that all match up with parts of the video, but not simultaneously. The piece “Kinnickinnic” shows a scene from driving down an avenue on the south side of Milwaukee juxtaposed with a print of contours that match the scene at different points. If the whole video is watched, the viewer will see a car ﬁt into its contour in the print, then moves on as a building matches up, which then moves out of view as a streetlight lines up in its spot.

Still image from the video/print piece "Kinnickinnic."

Their pieces like “Kinnickinnic” reveal the print as being a snapshot of the real world, only capturing bits and pieces of the real world in the ﬁnal image, but then re-incorporate the real-life element back into the work. Other pieces use the video as a stand-alone element, such as the bag of moving jellyﬁsh seen in “Floating Worlds” or the animated seascape with sharks circling a man on a raft in “The Gallerist.” The thing that all the pieces share in common is a playful, lighthearted feeling that is behind their creation.

“The Gallerist” contains an inside gag with the ﬁgure being a gallery owner the couple knows, and in “Meninas,” a video of Stern and Meuninck-Ganger dancing and joking together is seen behind an image of the two standing facing each other. At one part of the video Meuninck-Ganger ﬁts into her outline, and at a different point Stern matches up with his outline. And at another point in the video they both run towards the camera and out of view. “I’d say 90% of our works have some sort of embedded humorous element in them,” said Meuninck-Ganger.

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In addition to the magical playfulness that they inject into the pieces, there is a strong grounding in past art, which is something Stern often includes in his own work. In several of the pieces direct references are made to the work of Diego Velazquez, Hiroshige, Hokusai, and other pieces simply draw general inspiration from artists as far ranging as Paul Klee and Louis Daguerre. “We always think of ourselves in dialogue with our history, and that culture, and our trajectories of understanding not just images, but image making and image reading,” said Stern.

When I talked to them they were in the process of planning an installation for a biennial show, “Current Tendencies II,” at the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University. The idea for the installation is that it will be arranged like a comic book, but instead of mounting the prints onto videos, the prints are to be suspended in the room with video elements being projected from the backside. They also plan to include sound effects for the ﬁrst time in their collaborative work. The scale and scope of this planned work goes way beyond their earlier pieces by actually creating the environment that they were only referring to before and immersing the viewer in an experience with stimulus and narrative all around them. But to accurately write about such experiential work is almost impossible, so if you want to experience the installation yourself, “Current Tendencies II” is scheduled for August 31 to December 31, 2011.

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Preliminary sketches for the "Current Tendencies II" installation.

Stern and Meuninck-Ganger each make impressive work individually, but it seems that by working together their ideas and achievements increase exponentially, which is likely due to their mutual admiration for what the other brings to their projects. “She’s an alchemist, she can turn anything into gold,” Stern said of Meuninck-Ganger. As the printmaker of the duo, she is perhaps the one with the heaviest hand in the ﬁnal look of the work, but she says that working with Stern greatly enhances the conceptual elements. “When it comes to actually conceiving of the ideas and that creative process, for me it’s such an internal experience, but he’s so wonderful at articulating well at what I’ve got in my head,” she said of Stern. However they do it, the two have a great dynamic that results in the creation of some truly unique work.

Nathaniel Stern’s artist site can be viewed here.

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger’s artist site can be viewed here.

The following images are the original works that were direct inspirations for a few of their pieces, obvious elements of which can be seen in the video.

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"Big Wave," from 36 views of Mt. Fuji by Hokusai.

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"Las Meninas" by Diego Velazquez.

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"Kusatsu," from 53 stations of the Tokaido by Hiroshige.

collaboration, Milwaukee, mixed media, Uncategorized, video, woodblock 0 Comments Leave a Reply

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