Biography
Alternating between analog and digital processes, Paul Sietsema employs existing imagery, borrowed from the visual arts, or found objects as a starting point to create unique pictorial compositions where representation and materiality are often interlaced.
Paul Sietsema (b. 1968, California) lives and works in Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (1999) and the University of California, Berkeley (1992). Sietsema’s approach to image-making draws its inspiration from socio-economic and aesthetic systems. Alternating between analog and digital processes, Paul Sietsema employs existing imagery, borrowed from the visual arts, or found objects as a starting point to create unique pictorial compositions where representation and materiality are often interlaced.
Solo exhibitions of Sietsema’s work have been organized by many institutions: the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Denver; the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (NMNM); the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago; the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio; the Kunsthalle Basel; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) in Madrid; the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA); and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. His work has been exhibited extensively in museums and biennials including Carnegie International (2008), Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, Germany (2008), S.M.A.K. Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent, Belgium (2015), and Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2019).
Alternating between analog and digital processes, Paul Sietsema employs existing imagery, borrowed from the visual arts, or found objects as a starting point to create unique pictorial compositions where representation and materiality are often interlaced.
