Sara Clendening (b. 1980, Philadelphia, PA USA)

Viewers of Sara Clendening’s work can almost feel phantom fingertips kneading their own skin as the trained massage therapist performs the spa culture ritual to her entrancing sculptural works of art. Of equal note is the rakish pathos that takes center stage in her characters’ intriguing battle to upstage their cultural inheritance. 

Clendening received her BFA in 2003 from the School of Art Institute of Chicago with a focus on painting and sculpture and in 2007 attended The Mountain School of Art, Los Angeles. Select galleries and institutions that have exhibited her work include Green Gallery, Milwaukee (2009, 2005), China Art Objects, Los Angeles (2009), Bonelli Contemporary, Los Angeles (2008), Artscape, Baltimore (2008, 2005), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland (2007), Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita (2006), Daniel Reich Gallery, New York (2004), Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York (2004), and LACE, Los Angeles (2004). Art fairs include the LA Art Fair with Ooga Booga, Los Angeles (2008), Frieze Art Fair with Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, London (2007), Milwaukee International Art Fair, Wilwaukee (2006) and NADA with General Store, Milwaukee (2005).

Publications in which Clendening and her work have been profiled include the Village Voice and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She is also featured in Younger than Jesus: Artist Directory, published by the New Museum and Phaidon Press in 2009. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles. 

Image: Sara Clendening, Laissez-faire (rub down), 2011, mixed media, 75 x 24 x 40 inches (190.5 x 60.96 x 101.6 cm).

(c) Sara Clendening