Justine Kurland

In Kurland 's fantasies, nature is filled with roaming packs of adolescent girls, equal parts innocence and delinquency. Inspired by the childhood games she and her sister played out in the woods around the commune where she was raised, Kurland has created a series of highly stylized, hyper-focused tableaux, a pagan world made realistic by adolescent posturing.

And while images such as Eel Swamp (2001), where subjects wade thigh high in still water as another floats face up, may suggest a pre-Raphaelite homage to Ophelia, the images are unmistakably contemporary. Shot on location in both the U.S and in New Zealand , Kurland likes her landscapes slightly menacing, creating faux utopias in the shadows of a highway overpass and in the dampness of a stagnant pond.

Justine Kurland was born in Warsaw , NY and received her B.F.A from School of Visual Arts , NY in 1996, and her M.F.A. from Yale University in 1998. Her work is featured in the permanent collections of the Margulies Family, the ICCP and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Kurland currently lives and works in New York City .

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Justine Kurland