Oriane Stender

A native of San Francisco, Oriane Stender studied at San Francisco Art Institute and UC Berkeley, and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

She began working with currency in the late 1990s because everyone, whether inside or outside of the art world, has a relationship - often a complicated one - with money, so it is a potent material, rife with association and meaning. Most of us are preoccupied with getting it, keeping it, spending it, but we don’t often really look at these ubiquitous pieces of paper. Drawing attention to individual visual elements of the dollar bill encourages us to slow down and experience things that we may see and touch every day but don’t really look at or think about.

Stender’s work with currency utilizes the tactics of appropriation and a critique of materialism and consumerism, using old-fashioned, analog processes - including sewing and weaving - often associated with folk art, crafts and women’s work. In all her work, she strives to balance the conceptual with the visceral, giving equal weight to both the intellectual and the craft.

She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Venues include Allan Stone Gallery, New York, NY; Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, CA; Fred Giampietro Gallery, New Haven, CT; Schema Projects, Transmitter, and Trestle Projects, David and Schweitzer Contemporary, and Pierogi in Brooklyn, NY; Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque, NM; Boecker Contemporary, Heidelberg, Germany. Art fairs include Art Basel; Art Basel Miami Beach; Sluice 2015, London; Paper Paris.

Her work is represented in the collections of Centerbridge LLC, New York, NY; Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco/M.H. de Young Memorial Museum; JP Morgan Chase, New York, NY; Synopsys Incorporated, Mountain View, CA; Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR; International Collage Center, Milton, PA, and over 100 private collections.