Rena Leinberger

Statement & Resume

Recent Works

Previous Works

Reviews

"Fragment," wool, felt and brick, 15" x 66" x 3"

I focus my attention on architectural spaces and functional objects through interventions and alterations. I often shift materials, dislodge context or tweak scale to amplify the persistent anxieties that have become part of the landscape of contemporary living. I introduce absurd possibilities and create a sense of instability, disaster and ruination. In these fictive spaces that are at once deeply familiar and uncannily unsettling, the viewer confronts work that elicits both a physical and psychological response.

By sliding the work away from its utilitarian function, the work bumps against the edges of our perception and questions our own adaptability. It provides space to examine the strange beauty, wreckage and oddity of the world we build for ourselves.

Rena Leinberger, 2009

"Into the cellar," Mini dv video, color with sound, 5min 30sec., 2005

It will be enough:
I work with potatoes.  I sew and knit sculptures that cover and wrap potatoes, whittle sculptures that clean and remove potatoes, and photographs and film potatoes in absurd situations of excess and longing.

Evocative of farming, clothing, and the isolation of home, the works in It will be enough grow out of sickness, slowness and loss.  They are a collapse of hope, but also a belief in the power and necessity of sustenance.

Sometimes this sustenance comes in the most unexpected of ways: potatoes have often been the last resort in famine and war.   But their spread to worldwide cuisine depended on Spanish Conquistadors and a shipwreck that washed potatoes ashore to Ireland.

Potatoes are also very versatile and soothing: they can be boiled, steamed, fried, grilled or baked.  They can grow in cold and inhospitable soil.  They have some of almost every nutrient; it is possible to survive a long time eating only potatoes.
 

John Davis Gallery, Sculptures Choose Sculptures, Hudson, NY

As Small As Possible, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
Waiting, (with Ben Butler, as Lint) Evanston Art Center, IL
Compendium, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
Catching Up With the Sun, Klein Art Works, Chicago, IL
University Show, Northern Indiana Arts Council, Munster, IN
At the Edge, Gallery 400, Chicago, IL
12 x 12, New Artists / New Work, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
Sediment, site specific installation, collaboration with Ben Butler, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
LAPSE, site specific installation, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
Collectable, Northern Illinois University Art Gallery, Chicago, IL