Formally a student of painting and literature, Eileen Neff uses her understanding of presentation and context to create complex photo-based installations. Neff notes that most of her works, inspired by her many travels, involve landscapes as a primary element in her installations. She often juxtaposes these landscapes with her studio practice where she aims to “[engage] the conventions of seeing and picturing as a source of syntactical invention”. She began working with photo-based installations in 1981 and has since developed a range of photographic and sculptural strategies to express her own perception of the world.
In 1992, Neff collaborated with The Fabric Workshop and Museum to create a series of photo-based screen prints for the installation, Cezanne’s Dream, part of a larger installation The Mountain a Bed and a Chair. After opening at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the exhibition later traveled to Artists Space in New York. Neff states that she was inspired to do the piece after seeing Mont Saint-Victoire at the end of her artists residency at Le Chateau de La Napoule in France. The picturesque mountain is the subject of over sixty Cézanne paintings and is considered to be one of the artists most compelling obsessions. Cezanne’s Dream is an intense study consisting of shifting perspectives and dimensions while also providing commentary on how Cézanne’s paintings would become a key inspiration for Modernism for years to come.
Eileen Neff continues to photograph and has gone on to exhibit across the country and internationally. She was recently featured in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s New Grit exhibition, which highlighted Philadelphia’s emerging and established artists. In her recent works, she rediscovers old projects while being mostly confined to her Philadelphia studio amidst the pandemic. In this ongoing project entitled Work from Work, Neff plays with the cropped image and makes use of the natural lighting in her studio to create a variety of compositions.