Photo by Azuree Holloway
Jan Brugger is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and administrator that engages a variety of media and research strategies to animate or draw out meaningful links between things that might at first seem unconnected. Her work stages a distorted version of reality that reflects cultural anxieties and amplifies the counterforces that vibrate between everything. She creates colorful formations that activate the senses with attention to physicality, rhythm, and mise-en-scène. Vibrant contours floating on a quiet body of water. Rigid paper balancing on rusted metal. Dissembled mannequin parts posing across a statued gallery floor. Secret messages blurring into moody, amorphous pools. Playful characters animating digital and hand-drawn scenes. These objects offer opportunities to increase bodily awareness and reconsider how we experience and relate to the world. She received her MFA from the University of Chicago and a BFA in visual art and dance from the University of Wisconsin. Her work has been screened and exhibited throughout North America. She currently lives and works in Chicago, IL.