The Human Touch 2022
The Waking Dream, Woodbury University
"The Waking Dream" was an installation that combined animation, drawing, sculpture and collage. It was presented at Woodbury University, CA from October 26 – November 16, 2022.
Conceived for the Nan Rae Gallery at Woodbury University, "The Waking Dream" is an exhibition that combines elements of animation, collage, and sculpture. The artworks in this exhibition speak to our collective cultural zeitgeist of the waning pandemic. Mandated isolation during the initial phase of the pandemic slowly transitioned into the discombobulating ebb and flow of variants combined with shifting health and social protocols and the re-emergence into social interactions. The visual thread throughout these works is examines the abstract duality of isolation and community.
Photo News 2024
Photo News, January 1, 2019 – present, is an ongoing project comprised of daily montages built on headline fragments from lead stories in the daily newspaper combined with either news images or images of nature. The result is a series of heavily saturated images whose eerie hues highlight the surreal quality of the realities they reference. Phrases like “virus variant spread” and “despair deepens” clash with others, like “higher profits needed” and “return to normal life.” These demonstrate the inherent tension between millions of lives lost and unrelenting capitalist production. The ever changing but always familiar cacophony of headlines gives voice to the uniquely fragmented realities we now inhabit, lending the cognitive dissonance of the now a comforting legitimacy.
Note: The text above was written by the Artist. No modification was made by COCA.
Jody Zellen
United States
Jody Zellen is a Los Angeles based artist who works in many media simultaneously. She makes animations, interactive installations, app art, net art, drawings, paintings, photographs, public art, and artists' books. Zellen received a BA from Wesleyan University (1983), a MFA from CalArts (1989) and a MPS from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (2009). She was the recipient of a 2023 California Arts Council Established Artist Fellowship. She received project fellowships from the City of Santa Monica in 2021, 2016 and 2011 as well as a California Community Foundation Mid Career Fellowship (2012); a Center for Cultural Innovation Artistic Innovation Grant (2011); as well as a 2004 COLA (City of Los Angeles) Fellowship. Her work has been included in more than 500 group exhibitions and festivals since the late 1980s and is in numerous private and museum the collections.