Archive Project 8: Jody Zellen

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The Project Series
Project 8: Jody Zellen

Images of the city and their history have been the primary focus of Los Angeles-based Jody Zellen's art for over ten years. In her work, the artist appropriates and alters text and images drawn from the media and popular culture. For this exhibition, Zellen presented an outdoor installation that included eleven large-scale digital banners mounted on the Museum's facade and on Thatcher Music building opposite. Together, they created a vibrant experience for the viewer who walks between the colorful, gridded images and the massive black and white banner. Zellen's grainy, fragmented images of architecture and the urban environment contrast with the pastoral setting of the College, generating a dialogue between the suburban and the urban, between the real and the imagined city.

This exhibition of Zellen's work extended and expanded the artist's explorations of images of a city fragmented into grids and reveals new variations on the photographic montage. Whether making individual photographic works, artist's books, photographic installations, or Web sites, the artist addresses issues relating to the urban experience. Her focus is on the way we navigate space, both mental and physical, and how that experience relates to the experience of the city. Using extant images, Zellen finds her source material in newspapers, magazines, and books. Often, she includes segments of text selected from critical writings about architecture, and urban theory. By recycling and fragmenting images and text, the artist gives renewed importance to scenes often overlooked in everyday life.

This exhibition of the work of Jody Zellen was the eighth in Pomona College Museum of Art's Project Series and the first outdoor site-specific installation. The Project Series' ongoing program of small exhibitions brings to the Pomona College campus art that is experimental and that introduces new forms, techniques, or concepts. During each exhibition, participating artists work with faculty and students in relevant disciplines.

Rebecca McGrew
Curator