Visual Artist Jen Stark Tunnels into Downtown Santa Monica with 2nd Largest Sculpture To-Date

The portal is open. Los Angeles-based visual artist Jen Stark has brought her vibrant fractal-bending, pattern-echoing artistic style to the public in Downtown Santa Monica's Triangle Square. The outdoor sculpture titled Tunnel Vision is Stark's second largest and uses repeating rings to present both polychromatic and monochromatic visual systems in one dynamic piece. The addition is the latest installment for DTSM, Inc. and the City of Santa Monica Art Commission's public art initiative ROAM Santa Monica, created to activate the public real and expand cultural offerings in Downtown Santa Monica. Stark's art is featured at institutions across the globe including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in her hometown Miami.

Tunnel Vision is an optical double entendre comprised of a 20 ft. linear series of 10 waterjet-cut aluminum rings, each 5 ft. in diameter and coated with a metal semi-gloss paint. Onlookers can experience Stark's signature kaleidoscopic style in rainbow or black and white, depending on which side of the installation they're engaging. The shifting gradient of circles and colors revealed in aligning the sculpture's rings explores Stark's musings in nature and patterns in evolution, geography, and sacred geometry. Tunnel Vision will run indefinitely through time and space.

Stark was born in Miami, Florida in 1983 and received her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2005, majoring in fibers with a minor in animation. Since then, Stark has realized exhibitions globally, with major shows in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Thailand, and Canada. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the West Collection, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale and MOCA Miami, among others. Her artwork is driven by her interest in conceptualizing visual systems to simulate plant growth, evolution, infinity, fractals, and mimetic topographies. Stark strives to make work that balances on a razor’s edge of optical seduction and perceptual engagement. The resulting works often resemble organic, molecular, cloud-like structures, and are imbued with kinetic, undulating effects that serve to dislocate the viewer from staid reality into an immersive ecosphere of echoing patterns and the implausible designs found in nature.

Triangle Square is located on the Colorado Esplanade and Third Street, adjacent to the Sears building and Santa Monica Place.