Jeanine Oleson

Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist Jeanine Oleson (born 1974) created a 2017 exhibition at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, presenting her ongoing sharply absurdist response to research on the ways copper is produced and used in 21st-century capitalism.

Through a video installation, objects and a performance—including a copper-based instrument that reacted to human touch and a handwoven rug based on perspectives visible in three-dimensional modeling—the exhibition focused on the confused entwinement of the human into contemporary material, as well as the relation with representation and art when these activities are now, more often than not, mediated through the digital—for which copper is an essential material component. With humor, pathos and intellectual rigor, Oleson explores issues of labor, the environment, craft and performance.

Conduct Matters features an introduction by Connie Butler, chief curator at the Hammer Museum, and texts by cultural historian Jaleh Mansoor and legal scholar K-Sue Park, along with the full script of Oleson’s video.