Jaimie Warren

American Medium is pleased to present One Moment in Time, a solo exhibition by Jaimie Warren, her second with the gallery. One Moment in Time consists of two new bodies of work; an installation of “living sculpture” and a series of hand-painted cutouts depicting icons culled from pop culture and antiquity.

Shitgardens Wall of Scary Plants is the culmination of a year-long collaborative process whereby Warren and her team created an interlocking wall of sculptures inspired by the Instagram account @shitgardens. Sculpted in foam and realistically painted, these sculptures have hidden mechanisms allowing one or more puppeteers to transform them into characters full of life. Shitgardens Wall of Scary Plants functions as a scenic backdrop until the hand-carved trees, shrubs, and foliage become the actors themselves, transcending their station as mere scenery. Like much of Warren’s work, this project takes inspiration from contemporary pop-culture and traditions in scenic arts and film, appropriating the aesthetic of similar creations in movies such as The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Toyland. Shitgardens Wall of Scary Plants is yet another example of how Warren can combine 21st-century source material, nostalgic inspirations, and unique imaginings into something all her own.

Opposite, Warren has installed her first-ever series of paintings. These cutouts are a collection of excerpts from medieval paintings, B-Horror movies, and portraits of pop icons. These paintings act as a survey of Warren’s artistic and personal inspirations; the mixture of the grotesque and the reverential seen in this series is a line that can be drawn between all of Warren’s work.

Jaimie Warren is a multidisciplinary artist and Co-Director/Creator of the community arts project and fake public access tv show “Whoop Dee Doo”. Warren is a NYFA Fellow in Interdisciplinary Arts, and has been awarded artist residencies in NYC with the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, BRICworkspace, Abrons AIRspace, and is a current Artist-in-Residence with Pioneer Works and upcoming resident with Yaddo. Her work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Art in America, artnet, ArtNews, and Artforum, among others. Warren is the recipient of the Baum Award for An Emerging American Photographer, and is a featured artist in Art 21's documentary series "New York Close Up”.

Warren has had solo exhibitions at Higher Pictures, The Hole and american medium, and career highlights include exhibiting installations, photography, video or live performance at Showroom Mama (Rotterdam), Getsumin (Osaka), and Extrapool (Nijmegen), Cement Fondue (Sydney Australia), the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), the San Diego Museum of Art, Centre d'Art (Catalonia), Spritmuseum (Stockholm), Proyectos Monclova (Mexico City), and the Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh).

Whoop Dee Doo (est. 2006) has created commissioned projects for SFMOMA (San Francisco), the Smart Museum (Chicago), Loyal Gallery (Sweden), and The Contemporary (Baltimore) among others. Whoop Dee Doo has received a Franklin Furnace Grant, an Abrons Arts Center Artist Fellowship, and was a 2016 artist-in-residence at the High Line (NYC).