STATEMENT:
I utilize ordinary, everyday materials as object, image and artifice, navigating our surroundings as simultaneously constructed and fictive space. These duplicative and reciprocal relationships produce an inquiry into progress, communities and our imaged selves, and the collapse of ideologies that accompany our architectures and environments.

The alternating redundancy and unexpected nature of my materials and forms invite a contemplation of time. The work is deeply ambivalent as it mines the past into the present and appeals to possible futures both impending and capacious – the ones we have not yet seen or built, and the ones in which we may apprehend or hope for more. 



BIO:

Working primarily in sculpture, public projects, and photography, Rena Leinberger's work has been exhibited in solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Gallery 400 at University of Illinois Chicago; Zg Gallery, Chicago; Georgia Southern University; the Evanston Art Center, Evanston, Illinois; and 1R Gallery, Chicago. The NYC DOT’s Urban Art Program commissioned her for a two-year temporary outdoor installation in Queens. She has also exhibited in two-person shows at Radiator Gallery, New York, and Woodstock Artists' Association and Museum, Woodstock, New York.

Her work has been included in group shows internationally in Germany, Great Britain, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates. She has also been included in group exhibitions at Queens Museum of Art, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Smack Mellon, Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, CUE Art Foundation, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art - MASS MoCA , the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Garnerville Art Center, John Davis Gallery, and the City of San Antonio International Center, among others.

Awards include grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, a sponsored residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York, several SUNY Research and Creative Project Grants, residencies at threewalls and Catwalk Institute, and a fellowship in the Bronx Museum's AIM program. She was recently a participant in Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing Space residency program on Governors Island, New York, and an artist-in-residence at Dickinson College.

Her work has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, FiberArts, Chicago Tribune, ArtSpiel, the Chicago Reader, New City, Artnet, ArtSlant, Bridge Magazine, mouthtomouth and the Brooklyn Rail, among others.

Leinberger’s work is included in private collections, and public collections including the University of Utah, Marriott Library, Special Collections; UC Berkeley, Environmental Design Library, Special Collections; Nevada Museum of Art Center for Art + Environment Archives Collections; The Center for Book Arts, New York; Dennison University Doane Library; Massachusetts College of Art, Godine Library, Artist Book Collection; Otis College of Art & Design Library Artist Book Collection; School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection; University of Utah Arts Library; Virginia Commonwealth University, James Branch Cabell Library, Book Art Collection.

b. Ludington, Michigan
MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Lives and works in New York