Jeanne Silverthorne
Jeanne Silverthorne (b. 1950, Philadelphia, PA) lives and works in New York, NY. For more than three decades, Jeanne Silverthorne has taken the studio as her subject. Her work is meticulous and personal, first fashioning everyday items in clay, then casting them in industrial-grade rubber. These objects reflect reality but colored with phosphorus or changed in scale, they retain their uniqueness.
Thus she makes light bulbs, some broken, that fill and spill from a garbage bin; or wire cables, task chairs and shipping crates. Such banal items become metaphors for the inevitability of age and decay, but tempered with humor, hope and humanity.
Silverthorne came of age as an artist when women sculptors not infrequently used Eva Hesse as inspiration and this was true for Silverthorne as well. But her work aligns more closely with the “handmade readymades” of Robert Gober whose sinks and cribs are rooted in memory.
Nature is ever present in her work: dandelions and weeds grow between rubber floorboards, trompe l’oeil sunflowers and flies become still-lifes, her Memento Mori. Since 2007 Silverthorne has been making a functional rubber crate for each sculpture that, upon reaching its destination and contents unpacked, becomes part of the exhibition. In the end, her work is quiet and poignant, counterpoints to the severity of Male Formalism: Serra, Judd, and Andre. Her subjects are imbued with humility and materiality.
Jeanne Silverthorne received a BA and an MA from Temple University. For over two decades she showed at the respected McKee Gallery up to David and Renee McKee’s retirement in 2015. Her one-person museum exhibits include PS1, New York, the ICA Philadelphia, Phillips Collection, Washington D.C and Whitney Museum, New York. In 2017, she was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work is included in many major museum collections, including MoMA, New York; MFA Houston, SFMOMA, CA and the Whitney Museum in New York. In October 2017 she exhibited at The Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, MA. Jeanne Silverthorne currently teaches at School of Visual Arts (SVA) New York and is represented by MARC STRAUS.
-
In My Mother's House, 2023
-
Double Sneakers (The Three Sillies), 2023
-
Double Dolly with Fly, 2021
-
Hanging Question Mark, 2020
-
Two Crates with Hanging Skeletons, 2019
-
End of Day, 2016–2022
-
Suicidal Sunflower, 2014
-
Venus Flytrap with Xerxes Blue (Extinct), Two Crates, 2012–2019
-
Floor with Roots, 2012
-
Knothole, 2011
-
Rubber Rubber Plant with Drip, 2009
-
DNA Candelabra (showing the beginning genetic sequences for depression, anxiety, addiction, anger, and panic), 2007
-
In Search of Liberty
April 12 - May 24, 2024 -
Jeanne Silverthorne
And the Unfathomable Night of Dreams Began November 12 - December 20, 2023 -
Contaminated Landscape
June 16 - August 12, 2022 -
Jeanne Silverthorne
January 10 - February 16, 2020 -
Jeanne Silverthorne
January 9 - February 24, 2019 -
Stereo Love Seats Hot Wheels
June 8 - July 28, 2018 -
Jeanne Silverthorne
October 22 - December 10, 2017 -
The White Heat
June 3 - July 14, 2017
-
Jeanne Silverthorne in THE KITE
February 4, 2024 -
Jeanne Silverthorne in Sculpture Magazine
December 12, 2023 -
Jeanne Silverthorne at Lyndhurst Mansion
June 9, 2022 -
Jeanne Silverthorne at Butler Gallery Museum
April 19, 2022 -
Jeanne Silverthorne at Sheldon Museum of Art
February 11, 2022 -
Jeanne Silverthorne at Rowan University Art Gallery
November 9, 2021 -
Jeanne Silverthorne in The East Hampton Star
May 28, 2021 -
Jeanne Silverthorne at Waterbury’s Mattatuck Museum
April 29, 2021 -
Jeanne Silverthorne in Sculpture Magazine
January 16, 2021 -
Marie Watt, Jeanne Silverthorne, Anne Samat, Rona Pondick, and Anna Leonhardt at Nassau County Museum of Art
January 7, 2021 -
Jeanne Silverthorne in The Brooklyn Rail
December 13, 2020 -
Jeanne Silverthorne at University of Kentucky Art Museum
September 18, 2020 -
Jeanne Silverthorne in The Brooklyn Rail
February 13, 2019 -
Jeanne Silverthorne in Sculpture Magazine
July 15, 2018 -
Jeanne Silverthorne at Minus Space, Galerie Richard
July 12, 2018 -
Thomas Bangsted and Jeanne Silverthorne in The Brooklyn Rail
December 14, 2017 -
Jeanne Silverthorne in Conversation with Anna Chave
November 17, 2017 -
Jeanne Silverthorne in ArtNet News
November 11, 2017 -
Jeanne Silverthorne in Observer
October 28, 2017 -
Jeanne Silverthorne at Addison Gallery of American Art
August 11, 2017 -
Jeanne Silverthorne in The New York Times, 1999
July 1, 2017 -
Jeanne Silverthorne in Bomb Magazine, 1990
June 11, 2017