Mari Eastman
Assistant Professor
Department of Visual Arts and the College
Mari Eastman is a painter whose work emerges from a pictorial study of fashion magazines, decorative objects, and popular figures that become intertwined with personal narratives. Her smaller paintings contain loose brushstrokes and often seem to be executed in an intentionally rough manner, defocusing the image and stripping back the initial delicate allure. Eastman works at larger scales as well, sometimes extending her mark-making beyond the canvas onto the walls of the gallery space.
She has exhibited at Bombon Projects (Barcelona), Grifter (New York), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach), the Berkeley Museum of Art, Cherry and Martin Gallery (Los Angeles), Spruth and Magers (Munich), Barbara Gladstone Gallery (New York), Maureen Paley (London), and most recently at the Green Gallery in Milwaukee and Each Modern in Taipei. Her work has been included in Modern Painters and The New York Times, and on the websites Artforum.com and Contemporary Art Daily.
Eastman graduated cum laude with a BA in fine and studio arts from Smith College, and earned an MFA in painting and drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was recently a faculty member. She will join the University of Chicago faculty on January 1, 2024.