Bio
Jill Adler (b. 1996, Manhattan, New York) received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2021 and her BFA in Painting, with concentrations in Book Arts and Printmaking, from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2019. Adler’s work incorporates a wide array of practices, including but not limited to painting, sculpture, printmaking, papermaking, bookmaking, and ceramics. She has exhibited in group exhibitions online and in person at Field Projects, New York, NY; Marginal Utility, Philadelphia, PA; Second State Press, Philadelphia, PA; Orchard Art Collective, Philadelphia, PA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ; Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD; and at Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, MD. Jill Adler currently lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Statement
My interrogation of my own memory–something that I once thought was pristine and reliable–is the foundation of my artwork. In attempting to reconstruct familiar places, like my family apartment, I see how my mental image of an environment can erode simply by trying to recall it. For me, this slippage causes an eerie panic; I realized that memory is all you have left to cling to when the people who could corroborate your experiences are gone. The luxury of asking someone to fact-check a detail of a family trip is stripped away, and you are left to your own devices to determine what is the “truth”. Did the couch in his room have three cushions? Or four? In my collages and paintings, I try to pin down the elements of these elusive spaces, at times rendering them as photo-realistically as possible, to perhaps fool myself into thinking I’ve finally “captured” them. But do I really remember the framed poster of lavender orchids on my Dad’s old office wall as clearly as I paint it? I think it was hanging above the small swiveling TV, or was it centered on the wall? I’m not sure…
