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Like a biology lab run by a Surrealist, Cindy Kolodziejski’s studio in Venice, California demonstrates the mind of the artist at her most provocative. Born in 1962 in Augsburg, Germany, Kolodziejski is known for her fusions of two-dimensional imagery with Duchampian three-dimensional objects she has found, modified, or created. Her integration of these disparate elements can be so seamless that, according to David Pagel of the Los Angeles Times, “It’s hard to distinguish between the found and the fabricated.”
The artist’s materials vary wildly, and include painted earthenware surfaces, embroidered fabrics, glassware, laboratory equipment and all manner of readymade objects, which she laughingly admits to searching for on sites such as eBay. Despite her deep roots in the world of ceramics, having studied under Ralph Bacerra during her undergraduate work at Otis and then with Tony Marsh at Long Beach, Kolodziejski has found an expansive freedom in her diverse sourcing of materials.
Her subjects range just as widely, although over the course of 20 years Kolodziejski has maintained a distinctive mixture of anatomical, botanical, figurative, and text-based imagery. Indeed, it is not so much the specific themes with which she engages that distinguish her work, but her idiosyncratic and often jarring juxtapositions of elements.
Kolodziejski first attracted critical attention in the 1990s, for works that transposed often suggestive imagery and social commentary onto more traditional vessel forms. As time passed, her forms have become increasingly original, as demonstrated by her Specimens series, which include vintage laboratory equipment and her Portraits of Sorts and Curiosities, a collection of small-scale framed works.
Cindy Kolodziejski’s work is internationally represented in major museum collections, such as the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Museum of History in Taipei, Taiwan. She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions in the United States for over 20 years.
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Awards
2005 COLA Individual Artist Fellowship
2004 Durfee Foundation Grant
2003 California Community Foundation/J. Paul Getty Trust for the Visual Arts Individual Artist Grant
2003 Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award
Education
1999 California State University Long Beach MFA
1986 Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design BFA
Museum Collections
Council for Cultural Planning and Development, Taipei, Taiwan
The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan
Gardiner Museum, Toronto, Canada
Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina
Museum of Arts and Design, New York
National Museum of History, Taipei, Taiwan
The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey
Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin
The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shiga, Japan
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2011 Portraits of Sorts and Curiosities, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
2009 Secret(ions), Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
2007 Reversal of Fountain, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
2005 New Work, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
2003 Garth Clark Gallery, New York
2002 Specimens, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
2000 Garth Clark Gallery, New York
1999 New Work, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
1998 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
1997 Garth Clark Gallery, New York
1994 Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1993 Garth Clark Gallery, New York
A Fine Line – Where Art & Craft Meet, Peppers Art Gallery
University of Redlands, Redlands, California
1991 Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1990 Garth Clark Gallery, New York
1989 Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles, California
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