In Conversation: Jordan Vinyard

Artist Statement:
Technology Dislocates. It pops the pleasant seams and streamline fixtures of our existence and demands recalibration. Yet, it is a self imposed currency. We hypothesize, test, squeeze, and tether ourselves to our technologies, while counting on the flexibility and resilience of our steadfast meat machines to endure. We suppose we stare at screens too long, crane our necks to participate in nihilist devices, and laugh at our role as couch potatoes consuming as many ones and zeros as possible. My kinetic sculptures, installations, and performances satirically reflect this relationship and our primordial complacency as propinquent subjects among our gadgets. Consisting of works that subtly breathe, lethargically stare at screens, and act as a sardonic addendums to existence, the ultimate goal of Summary of a Few Volts is to place the viewer in a fixed dilemma. It is designed to distill our cultural fetishes with technology down to simple elements of imposed power. Volts prophesy. They have led societies forward with wavering switches and ever evolving prototypes. This exhibition will consist of works that oscillate that history. From weird amalgams that play with forceful filmatic propagandas, to strange kinetic works that drag us to a grotesque presence, each piece stages an absurd choreography comprised of works that perform cultural autopsy. Through largely rubber-necking sensibilities, Summary of a Few Volts, prods the finite balance between humanized restraint and mechanized power.

Biography:
By challenging society’s prolific button pushing tendencies, Jordan Vinyard’s kinetic sculptures, installations, and performances satirize the human body’s exchange with the alchemizing effects of technology. Since receiving her MFA from Florida State University, she has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the International Symposium of Electronic Arts in Dubai; The Czong Institute for Contemporary Art Museum, South Korea; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson, Arizona; Art Basel, Miami; The Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, and many more. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Oklahoma Artist Fellowship Award, The United Arts of Florida Grant, The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Creative Projects Grant, and been nominated twice for the Joan Mitchell Award. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma and responsible for the university’s expanded media program including kinetics, bio art, installation, and performance. Additionally, she is the founder and director of Art Wrecker, an experimental space predicated on socially engaged and dialogical forms of art. 
Holistically, she is addicted to the mad-science of making.