Joan Truckenbrod
About the Artist
My artwork creates an intuitive conduit between technology and nature, ... simultaneously injecting each into the other. I am constantly intrigued by the physical sensations of invisible yet palpable phenomena in the natural world, imaging these ephemeral, transient experiences, creating physical artworks from digital drawings to digital fiber and installations. Developing algorithms embodying mathematical descriptions of these phenomena in nature, translating them into code, creating artwork that materializes this data.
The Whitney Museum of American Art
Recent Exhibition and Acquisition
Joan Truckenbrod’s artwork was included in international exhibitions, most recently a group exhibition at The Whitney Museum of American Art titled Programmd: Rules, Codes and Choreographiies in Art, 1965 - 2018. The Whitney has acquired four coded algorithmic drawings from 1975 and a digital textile created in 1979 for their Digital Art Collection.
Her work has also been exhibited at the IBM Gallery in New York City, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, Musee d'Art Modern de la ville de Paris, Les Cite des Arts et des Nouvelles Technologies de Montreal, and the Villa Chianni in Lugano, Switzerland. Her work has been shown in one person exhibits in Paris, London, Wiesbaden and Berlin, Germany, Chicago, and Kansas City.
Collections including her artwork are the Digital Collection at the Whitney, the Textile Department at The Art Institute of Chicago, the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, the Illinois State Museum and Northern Illinois University Museum of Art. In addition Parade Publications in New York and ISA Holding in London include her work in their collections.
Ms. Truckenbrod published a book about artists who inspire her video installations, together with her own projects, titled The Paradoxical Object, Video Film Sculpture with Black Dog Publishing (2013). Her work is included in New Media Futures, The Rise of Women in the Digital ArtsI by Donna cox, Ellen Sandor and Janine From (2018). In 2005 Telos published a book about Ms Truckenbrod’s artwork written by Polly Ullrich. Ms Ullrich also wrote an article about Truckenbrod’s Video Sculpture in Sculpture magazine (9/2007).
She has given presentations of her artwork throughout the US and Europe including the International Sculpture Conference in London, the Institute of Contemporary Art in London and the International Symposium on Electronic Arts in Helsinki. She has received a New Media Fellowship in Oregon in 2015, a Scandinavian American Foundation Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship. Ms. Truckenbrod participated in a residency at Playa in Oregon in 2015, and was awarded an Artist's Residency at Kala Institute in Berkeley, CA for the Spring 2004. She received a Special Assistance Grant from the Illinois Arts Council in June 2005. She has an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute. Ms. Truckenbrod is a Professor Emeritus in the Art and Technology Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
