EFA STUDIO PROGRAM: Member Artists
Whitney Oldenburg
Whitney Oldenburg lives and works in New York. She obtained her Bachelor's from Cornell University and her Master’s from Rhode Island School of Design. Oldenburg was the recipient of Cornell University’s Charles Baskerville Scholarship, the Maharam Steam Fellowship, the Toby Devan Lewis Award, and the Virginia Commonwealth University Fountainhead Fellowship. Whitney has been an artist in residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Atlantic Center of the Arts with Michelle Grabner, and Materials for the Arts.
Oldenburg’s work explores the delicate balance and reciprocal impact humans and objects have on one another. Through a post-minimalist positioning, and in the lineage of artists such as Eva Hesse, Lee Bontecou, and Louise Bourgeoise, Oldenburg’s work becomes propositions for understanding control in relation to excess. She is also interested in Georges Bataille’s ideas about desire as a lens to more deeply understand her emotional response to the world in which she is a part of and constructs.
Oldenburg uses natural and household objects to construct armatures, skins, or containers for her paintings and sculptures. The visual indexes of pilling, building, cutting, puncturing, and destroying, suggests a highly psychological and emotional labor; one that embraces phobia and anxiety as a part of existence. The forms Oldenburg creates are political stances, uncategorical and representative of a protest in which the body is implicated.
