Jeffrey Stuker is an artist and writer working primarily with digitally rendered images and video. His practice stems from ongoing research into the
technological and philosophical implications of mimicry across nature, science, culture, and language. At the foundation of this research is a sustained
engagement with biological mimicry and the evolutionary strategies through which organisms - most notably, for Stuker, insects - approximate
their environments, from camouflage and protective resemblance to the development of eyespots and other mimetic forms. The artist extends these
biological phenomena into the cultural and technological systems through which the natural world is examined, classified, and reproduced, including
museological display, scientific research, computational imaging, and machine learning. Rather than approaching these subjects through the conventions
of ethnographic or scientific observation, Stuker’s work moves between the formal language of narrative documentary and elements of autofiction and
historiography. Extending Walter Benjamin’s claim, set forth in his 1933 essay “The Mimetic Faculty,” that mimicry lies at the basis of all human
learning, to non-human learning as well, the artist considers the reciprocal imitation by which machines acquire our behaviors and we, increasingly,
assume theirs. This exchange recalls Roger Caillois’s account, in his 1936 text “Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia,” of an organism’s drive to
“depersonalize by assimilation to space,” collapsing the distinction between figure and environment. In tracing this philosophical concept of mimicry,
Stuker’s practice opens its forms to the strange density of the synthetic nature of our era, and its preponderance of computational images.
Jeffrey Stuker (b. 1979; Fort Collins, CO) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Stuker received his MFA from Yale University, New Haven in 2005. Previous exhibitions include Almost Like at Ochi, Ketchum, ID (2026); Otium
Perambulans in Tenebris at Gauli Zitter, Brussels, BE (2026); Parloir Milan with Gauli Zitter, Milan, IT (2025); The Hothouse at The Todd Madigan
Gallery, CSU Bakersfield, Bakersfield, CA (2025); From A Defoliated Monograph at Ehrlich Steinberg, Los Angeles, CA (2024); Mantis te Vidit at
Studioli, Rome, IT (2024); Pacific Standard Time at the Getty Museum/University of California, San Diego, CA (2024); Atavism for the Future at Ehrlich Steinberg, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Next Year in Monte Carlo at Ben Hunter, London, UK; Solid Projections at Larder, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Objects of Desire at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2022); The International Biennial of Contemporary Photography at MOMuS, Thessaloniki Greece (2021) and Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2020). He has written for art publications including
Artforum, Los Angeles Review of Books, Mousse, Bricks from the Kiln, Art Handler, The White Review and Effects, where he also serves as a co-editor.
Exhibitions
L-għajn, 2026
From A Defoliated Monograph, 2024
We'll Be Your Mirror for Condo hosted by Herald St, 2024
Atavism for the Future, 2023
Installation view. From A Defoliated Monograph by Jeffrey Stuker, 2024. Ehrlich Steinberg, Los Angeles. Photo: Evan Walsh.
Jeffrey Stuker, Wet Season, Dry Season, 2024. 4K ProRes video, 5 minutes, looped, edition 2/3 + 2 AP. Photo: Evan Walsh.
Jeffrey Stuker, Wet Season, Dry Season, 2024. 4K ProRes video, 5 minutes, looped, edition 2/3 + 2 AP. Photo: Evan Walsh.
Installation view. From A Defoliated Monograph by Jeffrey Stuker, 2024. Ehrlich Steinberg, Los Angeles. Photo: Evan Walsh.
Jeffrey Stuker, From a Defoliated Monograph I, 2024. 80 Kodak Ektar transparencies, Hasselblad PCP-80 Slide Projector, dimensions variable. Photo: Evan Walsh.
Jeffrey Stuker, Kallima inachus (Dry Season), 2024. Archival pigment print, edition 1/3 + 2 AP, 24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm). Photo: Evan Walsh.
Nour Mobarak & Jeffrey Stuker, Untitled, 2024. Archival pigment print, mycelium, lucite, dimensions variable. Photo: Evan Walsh.
Detail. Nour Mobarak & Jeffrey Stuker, Untitled, 2024. Archival pigment print, mycelium, lucite, dimensions variable. Photo: Evan Walsh.
Detail. Nour Mobarak & Jeffrey Stuker, Untitled, 2024. Archival pigment print, mycelium, lucite, dimensions variable. Photo: Evan Walsh.
Installation view. We’ll Be Your Mirror, 2024. Condo London hosted by Herald St, London. Photo: Andy Keate.
Installation view. We’ll Be Your Mirror, 2024. Condo London hosted by Herald St, London. Photo: Andy Keate.
Jeffrey Stuker, Kallima Inachus (Study for Recto Verso Ventral Dorsal), I, 2024. Archival pigment, edition 1/1 + 1 AP, 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm) each. Photo: Andy Keate.
Detail. Jeffrey Stuker, Feelings out of Season, (Sophocles, Fragments of Inachus): Recto, Verso, Emulsion, Base, 2023. Ilford negatives, loupe, pedestal, pedestal: 18 x 28 x 40 in. (45.7 x 71.1 x 101.6 cm); image area: 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4 cm). Photo: Andy Keate.
Installation view. Atavism for the Future, 2023. Ehrlich Steinberg, Los Angeles. Photo: Evan Walsh.
Jeffrey Stuker, To the Satisfaction of the Botanist, II (Daphnis nerii caterpillar eating Vinca catharanthus leaves, Grand Sud, Madagascar, 1952), 2023. Pigment print, edition 1/2 + 2 AP, 28.5 x 24.5 in. (72.4 x 62.2 cm). Photo: Evan Walsh.
Detail. Jeffrey Stuker, To the Satisfaction of the Botanist, II (Daphnis nerii caterpillar eating Vinca catharanthus leaves, Grand Sud, Madagascar, 1952), 2023. Pigment print, edition 1/2 + 2 AP, 28.5 x 24.5 in. (72.4 x 62.2 cm). Photo: Evan Walsh.
Jeffrey Stuker, Vinca catharanthus, (L’Herbier du Muséum, Le Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, Paris), 2023. Ilford silver gelatin negatives, loupe, pedestal, pedestal: 40.25 x 29.5 x 19.5 in. (102 x 75 x 49 cm); image area: 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm) each. Photo: Evan Walsh.
Installation view. Next Year in Monte Carlo by Jeffrey Stuker, 2023. Ben Hunter, London.
Jeffrey Stuker, Papilio clytia dissimilis, 2022. Archival pigment print, 39.75 x 70.75 in. (101.24 x 180 cm).
Installation view. Throughline, 2023. Bureau, New York.
Installation view. Feelings out of Season by Jeffrey Stuker, 2023. The Fulcrum Press, Los Angeles.
Jeffrey Stuker, Mimicry and the Monte Carlo Predator, 2019. 4K video, color, sound, 10 minutes.
