Jim Isermann

Never Turn Your Back On The Ocean, 2025

University of California San Diego
Geneva Hall, 9956 International Lane, La Jolla

Jim Isermann’s mural, Never Turn Your Back On The Ocean, explores the interplay of pattern, repetition, and shifting perspective on an architectural scale. At the core of each 12-foot patterned module is a reimagined grid, bending and reorienting so that the perspective shifts both vertically and horizontally. As the viewer moves past each module, the perception of depth emerges alongside the mural’s chromatic progression. This deliberate synchrony between spatial and color shifts situates the piece as an experience that is both perceptual and spatial as the composition transforms across the site through Isermann’s attention to alignment and mirroring. 

As a two-sided mural, the main face of the mural orients toward the street while the opposing side looks out onto a basketball court. The patterned arcs reverse and flip to echo across both surfaces, creating a harmonized alignment from either side. The vibrant patterning on the mural’s main face is bookended with bold fields of pink on either side that extend onto the interior walls of each stairwell. Isermann’s use of pink serves as a structural anchor for the mural, ensuring continuity across the architectural breaks while also acting as a threshold for entry and transition. With shifting perspectives unfolding across its entirety, the piece transforms from image into environment, creating a spatial encounter that extends beyond the wall itself. 

Isermann’s mural marks a milestone for Murals of La Jolla as its first collaboration with UC San Diego, realized in partnership with UC San Diego’s Chief Campus Curator’s Office, extending the reach and impact of Murals of La Jolla beyond the village of La Jolla. Situated within the student living corridor of Eleanor Roosevelt College, on the main UC San Diego campus, the mural comes to life through daily rhythms of movement and gathering, embedding itself into the fabric of campus life.

Isermann is an American artist whose work employs pattern, color, geometry, and repetition to explore the tension between structure and spontaneity. Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1955, he received his BA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1977 and went on to receive his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 1980. Isermann’s practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, site-specific installation, and product design. Embracing the vibrant energy of unexpected shifts, he reinterprets modernist design principles through engagement with popular and vernacular culture and exploration of how ornamentation and structure transform objects as well as spaces.

Isermann’s work has been exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Camden Arts Center, London; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Institute of Visual Arts, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Le Magasin–Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Palm Springs Art Museum, Architecture and Design Center; Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, Providence; Santa Monica Museum of Art; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; and Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Isermann’s work is also included in many major permanent collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; FRAC Poitou-Charentes, Angoulême, France; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Palm Springs Art Museum; RISD Museum, Providence; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. His permanent installation, Palm Springs Pride Monument, commemorating 40 years of Pride in Palm Springs, will be dedicated in November 2025. Isermann lives and works in Palm Springs.