Jennifer Pastor

Jennifer Pastor (born 1966) is an American sculptor and Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California Irvine. Pastor examines issues of space encompassing structure, body and object orientations, imaginary forms, narrative and progressions of sequence.

Pastor’s work has been described to play with the connection between the piece and the observer, making the observer hyper aware of their presence. Her sculptures including The Perfect Ride (2003), Dead Landscape (2009–2010), and Endless Arena (2013) are some examples of the connection made by Pastor between the piece and viewer. Her mediums range from animation to steel, and allow a mingling of the materials in a certain space.

Pastor's openness to a creative experience can be demonstrated in her participation of "Office Hours", which are fifty-minute sessions between a student and an artist. These one-on-one sessions allows for an exchange of questions and ideas in a non lecture environment to help the flow of creative ideas and questions. Office Hours encourages reflection and poses questions to better one's work. Office hours are also a mandatory legal part of teaching and should not be credited to Pastor's generosity but her reluctant participation in the University system. Studio Guenzani, Milan, Italy (1995) Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1996) Jennifer Pastor, Greengrassi, London, (2016)

Dead Landscape, 2009–2010 The work Dead Landscape is an installation featuring 40 drawings and photographs that juxtaposes archival materials on wars concerning the U.S. with Pastor's own drawings on public, culturally sanctioned fights, ranging from gladiator events to the Ultimate Fighting Heavy Weight Championship. The work was inspired by Pastor's research involving veteran combat artists from campaigns such as World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Operation of Iraq. The research involved interviewing these combat artists, as well as collecting "first impression" drawings of the war. The drawings were the initial reaction to the event, before the person had a chance to alter or subtly change the experience in their head. Many of these archival drawings and photographs, of which she accessed through the National Military Archives of the Navy, Army, and Marines, have never been on display before her exhibit. The contrasting element is Pastor's own "impression drawings", of when she attended local and national organized fights. These two elements are paired together in the installation creating an interesting opposition.

Endless Arena, 2013 Endless Arena is a large-scale endless loop sculpture inspired from "blind gesture drawings" made of electroless nickel-plated steel and painted fiberglass. The piece was created from gesture drawings Pastor created over a two-year period of attending unregulated fighting events. Endless Arena came from an exploration of the space of the fights Pastor attended, including synchronized movements and the shifting dominance of the bodies. "Pastor sought to synthesize and distill fragments of these observations, spaces, and visceral experiences into a sculptural work."

Museum collections FRAC Bourgone Dijon, France Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humbelback, Denmark Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California The Museum of Modern Art, New York New York San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, Turin, Italy Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands Whitney Museum of American Art, New York The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, Germany Participated in 1996 Sao Paulo Biennial, the 1997 Whitney Biennial and the 2003 Venice Biennale

Grants Louis Comfort Tiffany (1995)

Publications Perfect Ride (2004)