Packard Jennings

Gallery Affiliations: Catharine Clark Gallery

Region: Pacific Coast

Packard Jennings is a conceptual artist living and working in his hometown of Oakland, California. Driven by a deep frustration with the course of his country, his public, subversive, and socially conscious works probe problematic American issues with a critical humor. In addition to a consistent national exhibition record, his work has been exhibited internationally in Calgary, Madrid, and Barcelona, with fall shows in Geneva, Switzerland and Stuttgart, Germany. His work has been favorably reviewed in Art Forum, Flash Art, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, Kitchen Sink, Playboy, and Atomica magazine. He has received artist residencies at Cite des Arts, Paris, the Headlands Center for the Arts, Djerassi, and the Sanitary Fill Company in California.

My art is born from a sense of blanket disenfranchisement; be it my feeling of powerlessness in the face of mega-corporations, my disgust with the stewardship of our country, or my broad ideological separation from American fundamentalism. I make work that delves into the realm of activism, not only to connect with individuals in provocative and meaningful ways, but also to recast my roll in the system. I often put my work out into the world for chance interactions with people; this involves ad hoc installations and subversive infiltration of public and semi-public spaces, where the pieces are left to their own fate. The way people interact with the work gives insight into aspects of our culture. I employ humor as a device for lowering a viewer's guard to the reception of difficult content.