Katie Grinnan
Los Angeles, CA
Katie Grinnan received her MFA from University of California, Los Angeles in 1999. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2022, 2018); LA><ART, Los Angeles (2016); DiverseWorks, Houston (2015); Human Resources, Los Angeles (2014); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2013); MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles (2008); Aspen Art Museum (2005); and Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York (2003). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (2022); Kunstverein Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin (2021); Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (2019, 2017); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014, 2012); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2010). Her work was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Grinnan is the recipient of a City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship (2019), Center for Cultural Innovation Artist’s Resource Completion Grant (2012), California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2010), AXA Artist Award (2007), John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (2006), and Pollock-Krasner grant (2006).
Her work has been written about in numerous publications such as Artforum, Contemporary Art Review, Frieze, Flaunt, New York Times and LA Times. Public collections include MOCA Los Angeles, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, LA County Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Art, and Nevada Museum of Art. She is an Associate Professor at Cal State Long Beach.
Katie Grinnan, Electric Data Wave Serenade, installation view at Commonwealth and Council, 2018. Medium: Three-channel video. Director and Editor: Katie Grinnan; Videographer: Alison O’Daniel; Photographer: Ruben Diaz
Katie Grinnan, Synapse, 2022. Thermal plastic, sand, archival UV spray, hand-woven, sewn and dyed cotton, copper thread. Photographer: Paul Salveson
Katie Grinnan, 5 Seconds of Dreaming (instruments), performance with Kozue Matsumoto and Eugene Moon at the Annenberg Theater, Palm Springs Art Museum and Desert X, 2019. Image courtesy of the artist
Katie Grinnan, The Sensitives, 2022. Copper, Plexiglas, spray paint, aluminum, circuit boards, sensors, Raspberry Pi single board computer, speakers, shielded wire. Photographer: Paul Salveson
Katie Grinnan, The Sensitives, 2022. Copper, Plexiglas, spray paint, aluminum, circuit boards, sensors, Raspberry Pi single board computer, speakers, shielded wire. Photographer: Paul Salveson
Katie Grinnan, Infrared and Ultraviolet, 2023. Copper electroformed hive, copper electroformed wasp nests, copper electroformed 3D print of Webb Telescope, multi-metal alloy, painted Porcelain, copper plate, varnish. Photographer: Ian Byers-Gamber
The Vault
Katie Grinnan
Katie Grinnan’s work explores the resonances and dissonances between epistemological and visual ecologies, seeking to decenter human agency in favor of an enmeshment between human and nonhuman worlds.
Artist BioThe Vault will use a vacant Beaux Arts Style bank vault as a model for both real and simulated realities to create a speculative space. The piece will open with an “eclipse” of two bank vault doors standing in for celestial bodies and mimicking an eye, pointing towards our inability to see outside capitalist structures and cycles of extraction, overproduction, and consumption.
Grinnan will simulate weather conditions such as floods, erosion, and mudslides, followed by new growth, working with an animator to use the physics properties in the 3D program Blender. By setting the physics properties to cause different conditions and setting the timeframe, the scenario will sculpt and rearrange the original model, mimicking systems of climate change. Grinnan plans to work with climate scientists and ecologists to imagine possible lifeforms that might thrive in these conditions to model regeneration. This dynamic simulated environment running through dramatic cycles will contrast with video footage wandering slowly through the foreboding economic ruin of the concrete vault, where walls dissolve into scenes of ruins reclaimed by nature.
This video is part of a larger installation project, which consisting of The Vault, sculptures of two bank vault doors forming an eclipse; Infrared and Ultraviolet, comprising of electroformed beehives and a model of the Webb Telescope; Spirit House, consisting of a cast tree holding a sculpture of electroformed hives; and electroformed Air Samples (10 minute “exposures”), taken on certain dates and times coinciding with various events.