Jessica Stockholder

Jessica’s Stockholder’s work is known for using everyday objects and brightly coloured plastic consumer products to create art that basks in its “objectness.” Her work engages with modes of production that support contemporary consumer culture while simultaneously turning this system on its head. When repurposed, these objects lose their functionality and become virtually unrecognizable.

Her installations cross the boundaries separating sculpture, painting and installation and are sometimes called “paintings in space.” The moderately sized works on paper (the largest pieces are just over 22 by 30 inches), shown at Barbara Edwards Contemporary, can be similarly described as “sculpture on paper.” They assert the primacy of space in a way that is almost three dimensional. In these untitled works, created between 1998 and 2010, spirals and orbs dominate, with the occasional square, rectangle and triangle added. Some pieces are collages in themselves and some are working sketches of installation pieces. The collages include fabric, cotton batting and sometimes photographs, along with painting and drawing with pencil and coloured pencil. As opposed to traditional painting, which typically covers the canvas, Stockholder’s works on paper leave bare some, or much, of the background, creating a productive interplay between positive and negative space that is usually the domain of sculpture. When colour appears, it is what we have come to expect from Stockholder—bright, almost DayGlo pinks, blues and greens. These are colours harvested from the palette of the big box store rather than from nature.

Stockholder’s emphasis on space and colour might suggest that these works are purely formal investigations, but to look at them as such would be to miss the most important part: the way they lay bare and glory in the essential physical process of art making and actually subvert traditional formalism. The work unveils the discomfort, struggle, unease, insecurity and also the fun involved in making art, things that often remain hidden behind a finished piece of art but are so satisfying to see. The glimpse we are given is a privileged one that imbues the work with a sense of intimacy, a sense that is also heightened by the fact that, in order to experience it fully, you are required to spend time and get up close.

The working drawings insist on careful investigation. Handwritten notes are visible, such as “heavy thing” to denote a supporting base and, more specifically, “folded blankets holding painted squares.” In some cases these drawings morph into artworks in their own right with the additions of paint and collage elements. Stockholder challenges basic tenets of formalism in the work by replacing and substituting certain elements with others. For example, in one of the more minimal works, she uses texture as form by elegantly layering figured white paper on top of flat white background paper.

In the PBS artist interview series ART:21, Stockholder said that her art offers the possibility of experiencing a world beyond ours, beyond the everyday, although her work is made of ordinary or everyday things. I would add that this world offers visual pleasure and aesthetic elation, but it’s not empty pleasure. Instead it is a world filled with free-form thoughts that don’t need defining but can just be experienced in the moment. It is also a world of imagination in which most of us, including artists, don’t spend enough time. It’s a world that feels secret and special when you are in it, where you do want to take your time and linger. ❚

“Jessica Stockholder” was exhibited at Barbara Edwards Contemporary in Toronto from May 21 to July 10, 2010.

Tara Marshall is a writer, editor, educator and art historian. She lives in Toronto.