Art and Architecture department at City Colleges of Chicago
Workshop Facilitator
Jelena Berenc is a nationally exhibiting artist with a BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Berenc joined the Art and Architecture department at City Colleges of Chicago in 2008, where she teaches Painting and Drawing.
Jelena Berenc’s work has been exhibited nationwide in numerous solo and group shows including Evanston Art Center, Barbara A. Kieft Accelerator Art Space, Elon University, Union Galleries at the University of Wisconsin, Boston Center for the Arts, A.I.R. Gallery New York, SOFA Chicago, to mention a few.
Jelena Berenc has been featured in Art in America, Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction by James Elkins, SOFA Chicago, etc.
Her work deconstructs, philosophically, the most fundamental concepts of Reality. She categorizes her work as Information Realism. Use of materials is reduced to paper and pencil for the majority of the pieces. Minuscule drawing elements become colossal art pieces through a unique repetition of each mark. Most pieces contain tens to hundreds of thousands, and even millions of particularly chosen drawing elements. The granularity of marks and art processes is no different than current scientific understanding of the most fundamental nature of the universe and its granularity. Art processes whose interactions and relations create a new reality; much like information theory explains the creation of matter. Her work challenges how it is to be seen; how we observe, perceive, and connote the observed. The way the pieces are observed changes the piece’s concept. Through her art processes Jelena Berenc searches for the epistemology of Reality.