Oriane Stender American, b. 1960

Working out of Brooklyn, Oriane Stender is a weaver and a painter whose combination of the two mediums has firmly established her in the lineage of modernism. While her previous work has delved into Pop Art, cultural critique, and appropriation, her most recent woven paintings focus on formal expression, utilizing repetitive patterns of circles and grids that are not only universally recognizable but also recall architectural and urban design. Her specific interest in weaving derives from the extensive history of the practice, looking at its cross-cultural resonance and its mythologization in civilizations like Ancient Greece. Stender’s focus on a storied craft-based method, even using an 8-harness floor loom, is inherently a critique of the “digital-industrial complex” and an appeal towards “old forms of knowledge.” 

 

Stender has been the subject of solo and two-person exhibitions at Mat/Tam (Mantova, Italy), Gridspace (Brooklyn, NY), Valentine Gallery Project Space (Ridgewood, NY), Flanders Gallery (Raleigh, NC), Frumkin/Duval Gallery (Santa Monica, CA), and Gallery Paule Anglim (San Francisco, CA). She has also featured in group exhibitions at Equity Gallery (NY, NY), Schema Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Bellevue Arts Museum (Bellevue, WA), Palo Alto Art Center (Palo Alto, CA), Naples Museum of Art (Naples, FL), San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (San Jose, CA), and Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science (Tallahassee, FL) among others. 

 

Her work has been collected by the Berkeley Art Museum, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the Mt. Holyoke University Art Museum, and the Arkansas Arts Center. She has completed residencies across the United States and internationally, including the 2022-2024 International Studio and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, NY. Publications like the New York Times, the Chicago Tribute, Artnet, Art Critical, The New Criterion, and Artweek have recognized and written about Stender’s work. 

 

 - Texts by Jacqueline Yu