Jesse Sugarmann

Jesse Sugarmann is an artist and educator based in Bakersfield, California, where he serves as Professor of New Media and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at California State University, Bakersfield. Beyond his teaching practice, Sugarmann participates in the development and management of non-traditional art venues, having been the founding director (2008 – 2011) of Oregon’s Ditch Projects Artspace and the director of Oregon’s “Coast Time” residency (2011 – 2017). He is currently developing “New Country,” a new exhibition and performance space in Bakersfield that will open its doors in 2022. Sugarmann’s artwork uses video, photography, and performance to engage the automotive industry as a manufacturer of human identity, accessing automotive history as an index of both cultural progress and social development. Sugarmann has exhibited work both nationally and internationally in venues such as the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; el Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Michael Strogoff, Marfa; el Museo de Arte Moderno de Santander; High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Tree; Southern Exposure, San Francisco; and both the Paris and Berlin exhibitions of Les Recontres Internationales. Sugarmann’s work has been written about in publications including ArtForum, Art Papers, the Atlantic, Hyperallergic, Art Fag City, Frieze Magazine, the Huffington Post, and The New York Times.