Joanne Steinhardt
Joanne Steinhardt is an installation and fiber artist as well as a set designer who has exhibited across the United States, particularly in New York, New Jersey, and Florida. Her most recent solo exhibitions include features at Temple Bnai Jeshurun Gallery in Short Hills, New Jersey, El Barrio ArtSpace at PS109 in New York City and The Hostetter Gallery in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Other exhibitions in New York include Vital Gallery & Studios and Anthony Mascioli Gallery. Joanne has been published by The Pingry Review and Arts to Hearts Project Women of Influence in the Arts and notable achievements include dual grants from the University of Tampa.
The body of work mostly entails miniature models carefully constructed to convey ironic concepts. Usually, we will find in Joanne’s pieces a consistent theme where the model directly relates to the subject matter such as a miniature sound studio inside a guitar, a bathroom inside a toilet, a department shoe store inside a pair of stilettos, or a sewing machine inside a broken painting depicting cats playing with yarn.
These works contain intricate detail to the point of which the subject could almost be mistaken for real objects, the lifelike replicas of interiors and various subject matter reflect not a hyper-realism but a toy-like small-scale depiction reminiscent of a dollhouse. The miniature models offer a dynamic metaphor towards how we value our relationship with the material world. Even when natural elements are incorporated into Joanne’s works such as magnolia trees or gardens, they are still interacting with material objects such as appearing to be fried in a pan. The careful placement of various subject matter related objects within these constructed interiors indicate a sense of precision and attention to detail.
Books (pictured above) contains a publication torn out from within to reveal a living room set up to read literature. A stack of books lay on the couch and a neon glass chandelier illuminates the tiny model to pop out to the viewer. To top off the model, Joanne has the piece stabilized on a multishelf bookstand with a couple of books underneath. Such intricate attention to components of what makes a makeshift library in a living room offers an astonishing sense of capturing the subject in real time.
Joanne Steinhardt bridges time and space by producing intimately-scaled works which draw our attention, not through monumentality but through carefully conceptualized placement. She brings us closer to materialism, not in a cynical way perhaps, but to rethink what these objects integrated with spaces directly relating to them mean to us. With a knack for detail and an understanding of material value, Joanne Steinhardt takes us on a journey through her miniaturized imaginative realm.
