I mostly grew up in NYC, but from around three to seven years old years old I lived in Pennsylvania, Lancaster area, (a lot of Amish people).
I ran free and wild.
My first crush was on a boy named Troy. He was wild too.
At seven I swam for Cancer.
I didn’t really know how to swim so I did the doggy paddle for seventy laps. I had a strong determination and didn’t care what people thought. I still have the certificate.
JENNIFER ELSTER
Thinker, artist, writer, director, performer, musician and founder of The Development, a multi-faceted gallery and studio based in New York City. Elster's work offers a deep and direct awareness of the human condition and often deals with our current world crisis. She compulsively penetrates depth, while both antagonizing and playing with the boundaries in film and mixed mediums. Elster has collaborated with such artists as the late David Bowie and Yoko Ono, to name a few.
Currently, Elster is exhibiting her multi-medium exhibition QUITE A BITE 2024, which followed her multi-medium exhibition Take Heed 2022-2023, at The Development Gallery in Tribeca.
During Covid, in 2020 and 2021 Elster released the “The Virus Song”, “How We Do”, “C’mon Now Baby” and “You Know What Will Happen” from her upcoming collection of experimental songs while focusing her efforts on election security and safety awareness regarding Covid 19. Having been directly affected by the devastation of Hurricane Ida, she then shared the music video “We Don’t Want That For Our Future, Do We?”
In 2018 Elster had put forth a dialogue for our times in a conceptual art exhibition, The Wake the F*ck Up Show, at signs and symbols gallery. A survivor of many tragedies, including 9/11, Elster cut through to the artery to move the American conversation further along in this solo exhibition.
In 2017 Elster performed music and performance art at New York City locations such as the New Museum (group show including performance art by Jonas Mekas), Cornelia Street Cafe, Catinca Tabacaru, Salon Stux West, and West Park. Her video art was exhibited in such galleries as Central Booking (group show including work by such artists as Carolee Schneemann and the late Kate Millett) and the New Museum in a show about death, curated by Heide Hatry.
In 2016, Elster emerged from the underground and launched a pop-up The Development gallery in Tribeca for her multidisciplinary, solo exhibition, The Retrospective of an Extroverted Recluse PART ONE, culled from a large body of work amassed over Elster’s intense art creating life – the first time the artist has presented her paintings, photography, and assemblages of art work to the public. The work in the exhibition obsessively explored ways to deal with the severity of reality.
In Elster's directorial film work, she takes an unabashed look, in both documentary and fiction, into the complexities of the psychology of existence, which can be at times hilarious and at others times terrifying. In the upcoming film series (which she has been filming for sixteen years) ...IN THE WOODS (and Elsewhere), Into the Cave, and In the Studio, her subjects include Yoko Ono, Terrence Howard, the late Glenn O’Brien, Alan Cumming, Debra Winger, Rufus Wainwright, Aimee Mullins, Will Shortz, Questlove and many others. The films are created and directed by Elster, and are marked by her unusual instructions: the subjects have no idea what they have gotten involved in, what will happen, or if they will ever see the outcome. There have been glimpses into the project over the years, in the form of an interactive online art experience, ITW Pathway Part I, that garnered much press, but the actual series has not been seen by anyone.
Under the banner of her grassroots, activism organization, Nonpartisan Peace, Elster’s’ initiative #ProtectOurVote2020 was an effort to try and help safeguard the election through raising awareness; for this effort she also created the video art piece Vote Wisely. Under Nonpartisan Peace, she created a video art piece for gun control, From A Concerned Citizen, and she wrote a campaign, Net Neutrality = Democracy, with Gloria Steinem. Visit the tab Covid 19 / Social Justice to learn more.
Archived Art Biography
Over the years Elster had spent years of deep, and, at times, bizarre excavation into the recesses of her mind and the minds of her subjects, analyzing the depths of human nature.
Elster wrote, produced, and directed such short films as Ill Will and Dirty, and the feature film Particles of Truth which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, won awards in the festival circuit, made its theatrical release in NYC at The Village East, played on the Sundance Channel as one of the New Voices, and was on Netflix.
Elster began her career styling such talent as the late David Bowie, Trent Reznor, Chloe Sevigny, Isabella Rosselini, Thurston Moore, Redman and Method Man, and many others, and for such magazines as The Face, Dazed and Confused, Rolling Stone, Time and Paper.
Having grown up in the New York City underground art scene, dating back as a performance dance artist in her teens, Elster took note of the disintegrating experimental art, film and music platforms for original voices and decided to launch Channel ELSTER, a place for Out of the Ordinary Art, Cinema and Sound.
Elster attended NYU, majoring in writing and psychology, and graduated with Honors.
Please do visit J. ELSTER, where Elster's raw, sculptural, luxury accessory collection can be found.
