| For more information about this article or gallery, please call the gallery phone number listed in the last line of the article, "For more info..." |
April Issue 2005
Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, Features Works by Jessica Stockholder
The Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Greensboro, NC, is presenting the exhibition, Jessica Stockholder: Kissing the Wall, Works, 1988 - 2003, through May 8, 2005.
Jessica Stockholder is widely considered one of the most innovative artists working today. Her work does not just cross boundaries; it blows them wide open. Sculpture, painting, collage, assemblage, and installation wrap into, out of, and around one another, eliminating the need or possibility of considering any single genre independently. Her work not only connects the dots; it links colors, forms, lines, and spaces into always surprising relationships.
Stockholder has been largely known for her site-specific installations in this country and abroad. Throughout her career, however, she has balanced production of these monumental, multi-dimensional, and theatrical endeavors with self-contained works that reflect a more intimate, human scale. In 1988 Stockholder created Kissing the Wall - a "piece of furniture with paint wrapped around it and a light that was pointing at the wall" - initiating the smaller assembled works that are featured in this exhibition. Through these assemblages (in which the artist processes painterly and sculptural ideas that concern her) and collages and monotypes (intimate "sketches" in which she explores the pictorial tradition of framed space), we gain further insight into Stockholder's creative process.
Jessica Stockholder: Kissing the Wall includes twenty-two of her small and medium sized sculptures. She assembles commonplace found objects and raw materials - culled from the home and Home Depot - in such a way as to invite magic and possibility into items we normally perceive as having little aesthetic value. The resulting work is optimistic, energetic, fun, and as formally and intellectually rigorous as any to be seen today. With a keen historical awareness, Stockholder has looked to sources as diverse as Matisse, Cezanne, the Cubists and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as Minimalism, Allen Kaprow's 1960s "Happenings" and the post-minimal "scatter" art of Robert Smithson. Through her sharp conceptual lenses, Stockholder synthesizes these influences to produce highly original and intensely visual essays on the physical and perceptual experience of space.
The Museum has planned several events in conjunction with the exhibition including:
On Apr. 16, 2005, from 1-4pm, Weatherspoon will host Family Day. Join us for an afternoon of art activities, gallery tours, music, and fun for all ages, free to the public.
An illustrated, 96-page catalogue that accompanies the exhibition includes seventy-four color reproductions, essays contributed by Elspeth Carruthers and Miwon Kwon, an interview with the artist by Nancy Doll (Weatherspoon Art Museum) and Terrie Sultan (Blaffer Gallery), an annotated chronology and artist's biography.
For further info check our
NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 336/334-5770
or at (www.weatherspoon.uncg.edu).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.