Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins have co-authored work since 2000. Marman holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Western Ontario, and Borins holds a BA in Art History from McGill University. Both artists have also obtained advanced degrees from the Ontario College of Art and Design.
In a body of work encompassing installations, paintings, large-format sculpture, and electronic media, Marman and Borins contextualize visual art within everyday life while simultaneously referring to and reassessing twentieth century art history. Their practice carries interpretations of the information age and postulations on its digital implications. Their artwork ruminates on how images are circulated, showing remixes and speculative narratives – to provide commentary on our contemporary mass visual culture.
Marman and Borins have exhibited in museums in Canada and abroad. In 2008 they took part in the watershed group installation show Caught in the Act, a survey of 11 major artists, the largest sculpture show of its kind to date. The artists have produced seminal exhibitions such as Project for a New American Century at the Art Gallery of York University, and exhibitions such as The Collaborationists which toured to five North American museums. Their latest touring show Three Dimensions debuted at Contemporary Calgary, and will show at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, and the McIntosh Gallery.
On an institutional, museum, and gallery level, Marman and Borins’ work is often intervention based: situating the visual arts within the context of everyday life, while simultaneously referring to aspects of the history of art, and to contemporary art movements. Their practice also questions ideas pertaining to authenticity while formulating artworks according to experimental narratives.
Through these approaches, their projects identify tensions that arise in the politicization, historicization, and visuality of the artwork, often within the context of conceptualism combined with mass visual language, mass media, and the ways in which images circulate in the information age.
On a public art level, Marman and Borins’ practice has grown from roots in site-responsiveness, temporary, and intervention-based projects. These earlier pursuits inform their ability to take on permanent projects about place-keeping, place-hood, integration, and the ways in which abstract forms and design can tell narratives symbolically.
Marman and Borins’ practice remains committed to studio and museum quality works, while they continue to build on a broader and ever-evolving understanding of public art. Both areas of their pursuits combine holistically to provide for context engaging on a variety of levels – from mass appeal to groups particularly informed critically and historically in the field of visual art.