PAUL SIETSEMA

Early Years and Background

Born in Southern California, Sietsema spent formative years in Northern California and developed early interests in counterculture, particularly the Bay Area punk scene in the 1980s. In 1992, Sietsema visited the first US solo exhibition of Jeff Koons, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which proved to be an influence on his early thinking and work. He completed his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley in 1992, and later earned his MFA from UCLA in 1999, studying under influential artists like Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy, and Charles Ray. Sietsema continues to live and work in Los Angeles.

Paul Sietsema Artworks

Paul Sietsema’s work explores how objects—often drawn from history or daily life—participate in the ongoing construction and shifting of cultural meaning, with special attention to their passage through time. His practice frequently centres on serial investigations, in which clusters of subjects such as painter’s implements, old newspapers, coins, rotary phones, currency, and exhibition posters become sites for examining processes of reproduction, obsolescence, and historical resonance. Through painstakingly executed drawings, paintings, and sculptures, Sietsema reproduces these forms by hand, employing intricate, highly detailed methods that evoke and reflect outdated technologies of image and object making.

Sietsema’s films, such as Empire (2002) (screened at the Whitney Museum), are acclaimed for their layered references—combining detailed models with explorations of power, aesthetics, and mediation.

Seminal Works and Developments

During the 1990s, as Paul Sietsema was beginning to develop his artistic voice, he took part in a group exhibition curated by painter Peter Saul in Austin, Texas. During his graduate studies at UCLA, Sietsema produced a trio of self-published books that reflected his experimentation with performance and sculptural practice. Immersed in the studios of mentors Chris Burden and Charles Ray, he honed both technical skills and conceptual approaches in contemporary art.

It was during this formative period that Sietsema also encountered Dan Graham, who later selected his early work for a group show at 303 Gallery in New York. Sietsema’s first public solo presentation occurred in 1998 at Brent Petersen Gallery in Los Angeles, where he debuted his initial 16mm film, Untitled (Beautiful Place). Since that debut, he has continued to create films characterised by their intellectual rigor and material experiment, a path marked early on by critical attention in Artforum and participation in high-profile shows including Mise-en-Scene: New LA Sculpture (2000, Santa Monica Museum of Art) and The Americans: New Art (2001, Barbican Gallery, London).

A pivotal studio visit from Belgian curator Jan Hoet in 2000 opened further doors for Sietsema, who was soon invited to take part in Sonsbeek 9 in the Netherlands—accompanied by a new artist’s publication, Construction of Vision. Through Hoet, Sietsema gained deeper insight into the legacy of Marcel Broodthaers, connecting with major Belgian collections and enriching his own conceptual framework.

In 2003, the Whitney Museum of American Art hosted Sietsema’s first solo museum show, where his film Empire—featuring meticulous reconstructions of Clement Greenberg’s apartment and an 18th-century Rococo salon—was shown alongside drawings and installations. This work reflects Sietsema’s ongoing preoccupation with art history, the politics of display, and mechanisms of cultural transmission.

Empire subsequently traveled for presentations at venues like Modern Art Oxford in 2004. As he gained momentum on the global stage, Sietsema joined the traveling exhibition Uncertain States of America, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Gunnar Kvaran, and shown at institutions including Astrup Fearnley Museum (Oslo), Bard College Hessel Museum, and the Serpentine Galleries (London).

From 2013, Sietsema embarked on his film and book project At the Hour of Tea (2013–2014), which premiered at the Wexner Center for the Arts before traveling to the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco. This film, arranged around five contemplative segments, uses objects such as coins, glassware, fans, and work tools to untangle narratives of ritual and value in material culture, their layered meanings echoed in the accompanying publication. His investigation into mediation and abstraction continued with works like Abstract Composition (2014), a 35mm film shown at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.

Across his career, Sietsema’s meticulously rendered paintings and drawings have chronicled everyday tools and artifacts—coins, telephones, painter’s brushes, and posters—each work produced by hand and often incorporating poured enamel. These series meditate on obsolescence, systems of value, and the evolving language of reproduction and communication. Notably, his 2014 show at Matthew Marks included a sequence of ink paintings emulating architectural inscriptions—works that evoke the concept of time both as personal reflection and as a record of cultural continuity, imbuing the flatness of trompe l’œil technique with layers of historical and conceptual resonance.

Select Awards and Accolades

• FCA Grant Recipient (2002)
• Guggenheim Fellowship (2005)
• DAAD Berlin Artist-in-Residence Fellowship (2008)
• Wexner Center Residency Award (2010)

Paul Sietsema Exhibitions

Paul Sietsema has held solo exhibitions at important institutions and leading commercial galleries, including:

• Whitney Museum of American Art (New York)
• Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, New York)
• Kunsthalle Basel (Basel)
• Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus)
• Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid)
• Marian Goodman Gallery (Paris)
• Matthew Marks Gallery (New York/Los Angeles)
• Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (Villa Paloma, Monaco)

He has also featured in numerous important group exhibitions, including at institutions such as the MCA Chicago, MCA Denver, Wexner Center for the Arts, Berlin Biennial, Carnegie International, S.M.A.K. Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent, and the Istanbul Biennial.

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