Jessica Stockholder (born 1959) is a Canadian-American artist known for site-specific
installation works and sculptures that are often described as "paintings in space."
[Kino, Carol]
"Go Ahead, Play With (And On) the Art,"
''The New York Times'', June 14, 2009. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Asthoff, Jens. Jessica Stockholder: Peer Out to See,"''Artforum'', December 2010. Retrieved January 6, 2022.][Schwabsky, Barry. "The Magic of Sobriety,]
''Jessica Stockholder''
London: Phaidon Press, 1995. Retrieved January 12, 2022. She came to prominence in the early 1990s with monumental works that challenged boundaries between artwork and display environment as well as between pictorial and physical experience.
[Barliant, Claire. "Jessica Stockholder: Redefining the Frame," ''Sculpture'', April 2005, p. 35–9.][Westfall, Stephen]
"Jessica Stockholder by Stephen Westfall,"
''Bomb'', October 1992. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Celant, Germano]
''Installations in Symbiosis: Jessica Stockholder''
London/New York: Phaidon Press. Retrieved January 12, 2022. Her art often presents a "barrage"
[Molesworth, Helen]
"Jessica Stockholder,"
''Frieze'', September 5, 1996. Retrieved January 6, 2022. of bold colors, textures and everyday objects, incorporating floors, walls and ceilings and sometimes spilling out of exhibition sites.
[Kimmelman, Michael]
''The New York Times'', October 6, 1995, p. C28. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Tillman, Lynne. "Lynne Tillman in Conversation with Jessica Stockholder,]
''Jessica Stockholder''
London: Phaidon Press, 1995. Retrieved January 12, 2022. Critics suggest that her work is informed by diverse artistic traditions, including
abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...
,
color field painting,
minimalism
In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...
and
Pop art.
[Smith, Roberta]
"Jessica Stockholder,"
''The New York Times'', April 14, 1995, p. C4. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Solomon, Deborah. "Domesticity Is Bliss," ''Time'', p.48–9, July 12 1999.][Pagel, David. "Between Pragmatism and Idealism: Jessica Stockholder's Radically Democratic Installations,]
''Jessica Stockholder: White Light Laid Frozen/Bright Longing and Soggy Up the Hill''
Odense, Denmark: Kunsthallen Brandts, 2005 Retrieved January 14, 2022. Since her early career, they have noted in her work an openness to spontaneity, accident and marginality and a rejection of permanency, monetization and disciplinary conventions that
Stephen Westfall
Stephen Westfall (born 1953 Schenectady, New York) is an American painter, critic, and professor at Rutgers University and Bard College.
Biography
When Stephen Westfall was an adolescent, he was fascinated by the social spaces created by archi ...
characterized as an "almost shocking sense of freedom."
[Cooke, Lynne. "Fabricating sight/site,]
''Jessica Stockholder''
London: Phaidon Press, 1995. Retrieved January 12, 2022.[Avgikos, Jan]
Jessica Stockholder,"
''Artforum'', October 2003. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Arnesano, Giuseppe Amedeo]
"Interview with Jessica Stockholder, What is normal,"
''ATP Diary'', August 17, 2021. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
Stockholder has shown at the
Dia Art Foundation
Dia Art Foundation is a nonprofit organization that initiates, supports, presents, and preserves art projects. It was established in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, the daughter of Houston arts patron Dominique de Menil and an heiress to the Schlumbe ...
,
[Van de Walle, Mark]
"Jessica Stockholder/Dia,"
''Artforum'', April 1996. Retrieved January 7, 2022. Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...
,
[Tillman, Lynne et al]
''Jessica Stockholder''
London/New York: Phaidon Press. Retrieved January 12, 2022. Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...
,
[Knight, Christopher]
"Four Floors of Evolution: The '91 Whitney Biennial divvies up painters, sculptors and photographers from the ‘50s to the '90s floor by floor--and the curators' conceit works,"
''Los Angeles Times'', April 28, 1991. Retrieved January 6, 2022. MoMA PS1
MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution at 2201 Jackson Avenue in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens in New York City, United States. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, th ...
,
[Johnson, Ken]
"Contrasts in Sculpture, In Theme and in Medium,"
''The New York Times'', February 21, 2006, p. E5. Retrieved January 5, 2022. and
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...
.
[Conti, Tiziana."Biennale di Lione," ''Tema Celeste'' (Milan), October–December 1997, p. 61.] Her work belongs to numerous museums, including the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
(MoMA),
[The Museum of Modern Art]
Jessica Stockholder
Artists. Retrieved January 6, 2022. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ori ...
(MOCA),
[Knight, Christopher]
"MOCA on the Rebound? Three Strong Shows and Free Entry are Welcome Signs of Change,"
''Los Angeles Times'', June 12, 2019. Retrieved January 14, 2022. Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...
,
[Art Institute of Chicago]
Jessica Stockholder
Artists. Retrieved January 6, 2022. British Museum
The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...
,
[The British Museum]
Jessica Stockholder
Collection. Retrieved January 6, 2022. and
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. .
[Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam]
Jessica Stockholder, ''Coupling''
Collection. Retrieved January 7, 2022. She has received awards from the
Guggenheim Foundation,
[John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation]
"Jessica Stockholder,"
Fellows. Retrieved January 6, 2022. Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...
,
[Smithsonian American Art Museum]
"Jessica Stockholder, Lucelia Artist Award Winner – 2007,"
Awards, 2007. Retrieved January 7, 2022. Anonymous Was A Woman[Anonymous Was A Woman]
Recipients to Date
Retrieved January 7, 2022. and
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...
, among others.
[Ivey, Bill, Nancy Princenthal and Jennifer Dowley. ''A Creative Legacy: A History of the National Endowment of the Arts'', New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001, p. 239.] She lives in Nanaimo, BC Canada with her husband, painter Patrick Chamberlain, where they moved in 2024 when she retired from teaching at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
.
[University of Chicago]
Jessica Stockholder
People. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Carter, Evan. "COVID-19 and the Creative Process(es): Jessica Stockholder," ''New Art Examiner'', June 2020.]
Early life and career
Stockholder was born in Seattle in 1959 and raised in Vancouver, Canada. Her parents, Fred and Kay Stockholder, were English professors at the
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...
.
As a teen, she took private drawing lessons with sculptor
Mowry Baden, a friend of her father's with whom she formally studied later at the
University of Victoria
The University of Victoria (UVic) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay, British Columbia, Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. Established in 1903 as Victoria College, British Columbia, Victoria Col ...
(BFA, 1982).
Her undergraduate work focused on painting, but explored nontraditional approaches beyond the picture frame, involving objects, boundaries and architecture that remain central to her art. An often-cited early work, ''Installation in My Father's Backyard'' (1983), for example, incorporated painted objects affixed or adjacent to her father's garage, including a double mattress, cupboard door, roll of chicken wire, and rectangular patch of painted grass.
In 1983, Stockholder enrolled at
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
where she studied with
Judy Pfaff
Judy Pfaff (born 1946) is an American artist known mainly for installation art and sculptures, though she also produces paintings and prints. Pfaff has received numerous awards for her work, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Founda ...
,
Jake Berthot
Jake Berthot (1939–2014) was an American artist whose abstract paintings contained elements of both the Minimalism, minimalist and Abstract expressionism, expressionist styles. During the first 36 years of his career his paintings were entirel ...
,
Mel Bochner
Melvin Simon Bochner (August 23, 1940 – February 12, 2025) was an American conceptual artist.
He is considered to be one of the founders of Conceptual Art,Haus der Kunst (March 7, 2013 - June 23, 2013) Mel Bochner: If the Color Changes./ref ...
and
Ursula von Rydingsvard
Ursula von Rydingsvard (née Karoliszyn; born 1942) is a sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for creating installation art, large-scale works influenced by nature, primarily using Cedrus, cedar and other forms o ...
, among others, and earned an MFA in 1985.
[Wilk, Deborah. "Mutable Feast," ''Art+Auction'', November 2016, p. 73–8.] Her work at Yale was often ephemeral and ambiguous regarding boundaries between artwork and architecture.
[Dafoe, Taylor. "Everyday Abstraction: A Q&A with Jessica Stockholder," ''Blouin ArtInfo'', August 26, 2016.] Her subsequent ''Kissing the Wall'' sculptures (1987–90) continued this approach with stand-alone objects, engaging intervening spaces between wall and artwork with mirrors and attached lamps that cast colored light on walls and structures.
After graduating, Stockholder moved to Brooklyn.
She attracted recognition in the late 1980s through exhibitions organized by PS1,
Mercer Union
Mercer Union is a Canadian artist-run centre in Toronto, Ontario, established in 1979 to exhibit contemporary art.
History
Mercer Union was founded in 1979 by artists Michael Balfe, Peter Blendell, Ric Evans, Peter Hill, Jamie Lyons, David MacW ...
(Toronto), The
Mattress Factory
The Mattress Factory is a contemporary art museum located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a pioneer of site-specific installation art and features permanent installations by artists Yayoi Kusama, James Turrell, and Greer Lankton. The museu ...
(Pittsburgh),
[Miller, Donald. "Victor Grauer, Kathleen Montgomery, Cady Noland, Jessica Stockholder," ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', October 21, 1989.] and soon after,
American Fine Arts (New York),
Le Consortium
Le Consortium is a contemporary art center based in Dijon founded by Xavier Douroux & Franck Gautherot, among others, from the association Le Coin du Miroir (The Corner Mirror). The center was run by Douroux, in collaboration with Gautherot and Er ...
(France), the Whitney Museum (including the 1991 Biennial), and
Renaissance Society
The Renaissance Society, founded in 1915, is a leading independent contemporary art museum located on the campus of the University of Chicago, with a focus on the commissioning and production of new works by international artists. The kunsthalle- ...
(Chicago), among others.
[Mahoney, Robert. "Jessica Stockholder: Where it Happened," ''Sculpture'', November/December 1990.][Smith, Roberta]
"Jessica Stockholder,"
''The New York Times'', March 2, 1990, p. C30. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Berbudeau, Eric. "Le Consortium s'expose," ''Nouvelle République'', August 26 1991.][Johnson, Ken. "Generational Saga," ''Art in America'', June 1991, p. 45–50.][Dercon, Chris, et al]
''Jessica Stockholder''
Rotterdam/Chicago: Witte de With/Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, 1993.
Work and reception
Stockholder's installations and exhibitions combine found and purchased objects, zones of painted, carpeted or intrinsic color, and various framing devices into unified "walk-in paintings" that merge artwork and architecture, surface and support, and figure and ground.
[Knight, Christopher]
''Los Angeles Times'', July 17, 2001. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Kravagna, Christian]
"Jessica Stockholder/Galerie Metropol,"
''Artforum'', January 1993. Retrieved January 7, 2022. Critics identify her key concerns as subjectivity, visual syntax and meaning-making, physical and temporal experience, and the upending of viewing habits and artistic conventions.
David Pagel
David Pagel is an American art critic, educator, curator, dioramatist and bike enthusiast.
Contemporary art criticism
Since 1991, Pagel has been a regular contributor to the ''Los Angeles Times.'' He is a professor of art theory and history at ...
described her installations as "unglamorous inventories of readily available items
ndrambunctiously open-ended yet rigorously structured constellations," in which "unpretentious, anyone-could-do-it ingenuity bridges the gap between dreamy idealism and down-to-earth pragmatism."
Stockholder's work has been discussed in relation to the development of installation art and to art-historical traditions and figures including
Cézanne and early modernism (e.g.,
Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual arts, visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, ...
,
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture.
Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...
and
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist. He was born in Hanover, Germany, but lived in exile from 1937.
Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dadaism, Constructivism (a ...
),
Action
Action may refer to:
* Action (philosophy), something which is done by a person
* Action principles the heart of fundamental physics
* Action (narrative), a literary mode
* Action fiction, a type of genre fiction
* Action game, a genre of video gam ...
, Color field and
Hard-edge
Hard-edge painting (also referred to as Hard Edge or Hard-edged) is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas often consist of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstrac ...
painting, Minimalism,
Anthony Caro
Sir Anthony Alfred Caro (8 March 192423 October 2013) was an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using ' found' and industrial objects. He began as a member of the modernist school, having worked with ...
,
Gordon Matta-Clark
Gordon Matta-Clark (born Gordon Roberto Matta-Echaurren; June 22, 1943 – August 27, 1978) was an American artist best known for site-specific artworks he made in the 1970s. He was also a pioneer in the field of socially engaged food art.
...
, and
Robert Rauschenberg
Milton Ernest "Robert" or "Bob" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combine painting, Combines (1954� ...
.
[Schambelan, Elizabeth]
"1000 Words: Jessica Stockholder,"
''Artforum'', January 2006, p. 206–7. Retrieved January 17, 2022. Critic
Barry Schwabsky
Barry Schwabsky (b. Paterson, New Jersey, in 1957) is an American art critic, art historian and poet. He has taught at the School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute, New York University, Yale University, and Goldsmiths College, among others.
Ar ...
suggested that these precedents share with Stockholder a rejection of illusionism, an emphasis on the physicality of painting surfaces or objects, and a direct, aggressive use of materials.
Helen Molesworth
Helen Anne Molesworth (born 1966 in Chickasaw, Alabama) is an American curator of contemporary art based in Los Angeles. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Chief Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.
Early life and educatio ...
and
Jack Bankowsky
Jack Bankowsky was the Editor-in-Chief of Artforum throughout the 1990s (1992-2003) and the founding editor of Artforum's sister publication, Bookforum, where he was editor from 1996 to 1998. He is currently Editor-at-Large of Artforum and a freela ...
have identified a "cataloguing of avant-garde strategies"
in Stockholder's art that they suggest has led to misreadings of her work in either purely
formalist
Formalism may refer to:
* Legal formalism, legal positivist view that the substantive justice of a law is a question for the legislature rather than the judiciary
* Formalism (linguistics)
* Scientific formalism
* A rough synonym to the Formal sys ...
terms or sociological terms involving critiques of consumer culture,
institutions
An institution is a humanly devised structure of rules and norms that shape and constrain social behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions and ...
or class.
[Bankowsky, Jack]
"The Obligatory Bed Piece: Jessica Stockholder,"
''Artforum'', October 1990. Retrieved January 7, 2022. Bankowsky and Schwabsky contend that Stockholder chooses recognizable objects for their formal, material or typological attributes rather than literal or functional ones (e.g., versus Rauschenberg), yet deploys them without completely stripping their extra-artistic connotations.
[Städel]
Jessica Stockholder, #358, 2001
Work. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
Michael Kimmelman
Michael Kimmelman (born May 8, 1958) is the Architecture criticism, architecture critic for ''The New York Times'' and has written about public housing and homelessness, public space, landscape architecture, community development and equity, infr ...
, contrasting the irony and social commentary of installation contemporaries (
Cady Noland
Cady Noland (born 1956) is an American Sculpture, sculptor, Printmaking, printmaker, and installation artist who primarily works with found objects and Appropriation (art), appropriated images. Her work, often made with objects denoting danger, in ...
,
Jason Rhoades and
Nancy Rubin), distinguished the "funky lunacy" and wit of Stockholder's work as more sensory, poetic, romantic and celebratory.
Writers frequently note Stockholder's de-familiarization of the everyday as contributing to such qualities as well as states of disorientation and fantasy in her work.
She achieves this through the juxtaposition of incompatible items, the use of color (intrinsic or applied) to assert unlikely connections, and a spatial approach that refuses any privileged vantage point.
Germano Celant
Germano Celant (11 September 1940 – 29 April 2020) was an Italian art historian, critic, and curator who coined the term "Arte Povera" (poor art) in the 1967 ''Flash Art'' piece "Appunti Per Una Guerriglia" ("Notes on a guerrilla war"), which w ...
described this approach as questioning "the fragmentation of awareness and perspectives, in favor of an all-encompassing vision, devoid of hierarchies and boundaries."
As a result, many critics interpret Stockholder's intent in terms of exploration or experimentation—in
Miwon Kwon's words, "a both/and attitude rather than one of either/or"—that maintains contradictions.
[Kwon, Miwon]
"Promiscuity of Space: Some Thoughts on Jessica Stockholder's Scenographic Compositions,"
''Grey Room'', Winter 2005, p. 52–63.
Early installations and sculpture
Throughout her career, Stockholder's work has largely been divided between temporary, site-specific installations created for quasi-public spaces such as museums and more human-scaled, autonomous assemblages or sculptures, often built in her studio and exhibited in galleries.
Her installations and gallery exhibitions in the 1990s were noted for their quirky juxtapositions, rough construction, and unusual mix of unruliness with refined, Matisse-like color and patterning.
[Curtis, Cathy]
''Los Angeles Times'', May 17, 1991. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Kalin Tom]
"'Plastic Fantastic Lover (Object A)', Blumhelman Warehouse,"
''Artforum'', January 1992. Retrieved January 7, 2022.[Kimmelman, Michael]
''The New York Times'', February 4, 1994, p. C21. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Pagel, David]
''Los Angeles Times'', April 25, 1996, p. F-11. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Liebman, Lisa]
"Junk Cultured,"
''Frieze'', March/April 1993. Retrieved January 6, 2022. In reviews of shows at American Fine Arts (1990) and Jay Gorney (1995) ''New York Times'' critic
Roberta Smith
Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position at the Times.
Education and early life
Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawre ...
characterized the work as provocative, "insistently abstract," and unsettling in its determination "to stop making visual sense, to combine the unlikely styles of assemblage art and Color Field painting
nhybrids so discursive and strange that the mind can't quite take hold of them."
[Saltz, Jerry. "Notes on a Sculpture: Mis-appropriation, Jessica Stockholder's Sculpture with No Name," ''Arts Magazine'', April 1990.] A ''Los Angeles Times'' review of a show in 1996 described Stockholder's "gloriously klutzy sculptures" as unwieldy and casually offhanded, but held together by "an acute, formal intelligence."
Stockholder created major installations in the 1990s at the Dia Foundation,
Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum
Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum (Dutch ''Beeldentuin Middelheim Museum'') is a sculpture park of 30 acres in the park part of the Middelheim Nachtegalen Park at Antwerp. The Middelheim Museum collection has approximately 400 works of art on d ...
(''Landscape Linoleum'', 1998, Antwerp), and Power Plant (Toronto), among others.
[Smith, Roberta]
"Making the Abstract Light, Sunny and Personal,"
''The New York Times'', November 3, 1995, p. C26. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Cluitmans, Laurie. "Stuff Matters: Some observations on Jessica Stockholder's work and methods,]
''Jessica Stockholder: Stuff Matters''
Laurie Cluitmans et al., Milan Mousse Publishing,/Centraal Museum Utrecht, 2019. Retrieved January 6, 2022. The Dia work, ''Your Skin in This Weather Bourne Eye-Threads & Swollen Perfume'' (1995), occupied a 3,600-square-foot room, spilling into the center's lobby and out windows into an alley.
Michael Kimmelman described it as raucous and operatic, with blocks of bouncing high-key color and multiple vantage points creating the experience of "entering a Matisse cutout,
David Hockney
David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English Painting, painter, Drawing, draughtsman, Printmaking, printmaker, Scenic design, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considere ...
stage set" or
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry ( ; ; born February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become attractions.
Gehry rose to prominence in th ...
structure.
[Van de Walle, Mark]
"Party Flavor,"
''Artforum'', December 1996. Retrieved January 7, 2022. Curator Lynne Cooke wrote that Stockholder "tangibly, concretely, merges art space and real space, such that
hey
Hey, HEY, or Hey! may refer to:
Music
* Hey (band), a Polish rock band
Albums
* ''Hey'' (Andreas Bourani album) or the title song (see below), 2014
* ''Hey!'' (Julio Iglesias album) or the title song, 1980
* ''Hey!'' (Jullie album) or the ...
become interchangeable," allowing her painterly space to achieve a quality of lived experience comparable to architecture.
''Sculptures
Deborah Solomon
Deborah Solomon (born August 9, 1957) is an American art critic, journalist and biographer. She writes for ''The New York Times'', where she was previously a columnist. Her weekly column, "Questions For" ran in ''The New York Times Magazine'' fr ...
called the Power Plant installation (''First Cousin Once Removed or Cinema of Brushing Skin'', 1999) a
Fauvish tour-de-force of "deeply cultured zaniness." She wrote that the work "domesticated" art history, with overflowing contents—lamps, linoleum, dropped ceiling, upended wheelbarrow, and trailer truck with tires painted swimming-pool blue—that stripped modernist reference points such as
Mondrian
Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), known after 1911 as Piet Mondrian (, , ), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He was one of the pioneers o ...
and minimalism of their typical moral gravity and utopian strivings.
Later installations and sculpture, 2001–
Critics suggest that Stockholder's later installations and exhibitions invite a greater degree of connectivity and viewer participation by incorporating "viewing" ramps and platforms, locally salvaged materials and objects,
and other artists' work.
[Smith, Roberta]
"Jessica Stockholder,"
''The New York Times'', October 21, 2003, p. E41. Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Picard, Caroline]
"Jessica Stockholder,"
''Artforum'', October 2015. Retrieved January 12, 2022.[Sigler, Jeremy]
"Stockholder in Utrecht,"
''Tablet'', June 26, 2019. Retrieved January 12, 2022. They also identify a shift in materials, toward bright, domestic discount-store items such as buckets, laundry baskets, dish drainers and plastic cups.
[Buhmann, Stephanie]
"Jessica Stockholder,"
''The Brooklyn Rail'', November 2006. Retrieved January 18, 2022.[Lehrer-Graiwer, Sarah]
"Jessica Stockholder,"
''Artforum'', September 13, 2007. Retrieved January 18, 2022.[Schwendener, Martha]
''The New York Times'', September 29, 2006. Retrieved January 12, 2022.[Nadelman, Cynthia. "Jessica Stockholder," ''ARTnews'', December 2006.]
Stockholder's sculpture from the 2000s has been characterized as more intimate, concise and less installation-driven than earlier work, with a balance of open space and formal rigor with looseness, improvisational freedom and painterliness.
[Cotter, Holland]
''The New York Times'', March 2, 2001, p. E37. Retrieved January 6, 2022. In two exhibition reviews, ''The New York Times'' described her "color field assemblages" as sliced and spliced household objects, walls and floor
suggestive of "a suburban house caught in the aftermath of an explosion,"
bound by the clarity of seductive bright colors and paint. In a subsequent show (Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 2006), works such as ''JS#433'' and ''JS#436'' were noted for their mastery of color and texture, unconventional fastening and suspension methods (e.g., backpack and tent frames, bike racks), and crisply delineated forms, such as an electric cord evoking a whimsical line drawing.
[Kraft, Jessica. "New York: Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Jessica Stockholder," ''Contemporary'', No. 88, 2006, p. 72.] ''The Brooklyn Rail'' described them as "humble objects" that opened to private introspection and associations, the element of surprise, and moments of "unexpected beauty."
The show, "Sex in the Office" (1301PE, 2007), was described as a provocation exploring taboo and "an erotics of mundane material surfaces."
[Brooks, Amra]
"Must See Art: Jessica Stockholder, 'Sex in the Office' at 1301PE,"
''LA Weekly'', September 26, 2007. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
During this period, Stockholder created temporary installations at the
SITE Santa Fe biennial (''Bird Watching'', 2001; assembled with materials salvaged from storage bins at
Los Alamos),
[Schjeldahl, Peter]
"Desert Songs,"
''The New Yorker'', August 5, 2001. Retrieved January 12, 2022.[Rush, Michael]
''The New York Times'', July 8, 2001, p. AR31. Retrieved January 12, 2022. Rice University (''Sam Ran Over Sand'', 2005),
and PS1 (''Of Standing Float Roots in Thin Air'', 2006).
[Lowenstein, Kate. "Jessica Stockholder," ''TimeOut New York'', April 6–12, 2006.] In 2005, she exhibited two installations at Kunsthallen Brandts in Denmark, ''White Light Laid Frozen'' and ''Bright Longing and Soggy Up the Hill''.
[Burkard, Lene et al]
''Jessica Stockholder: White Light Laid Frozen/Bright Longing and Soggy Up the Hill''
Odense, Denmark: Kunsthallen Brandts, 2005 Retrieved January 14, 2022. ''Artforum'' described the former work as "a careful calibration of strange-bedfellow(s)"—a fluorescent-yellow locker, blue tabletops, strings of foil pans, old fur coats, stacked greenhouses, varied lighting and a raised wooden ramp—that vacillated "between screwball comedy and the sublime."
''Peer Out to See'' (2010, Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid) was described as "a traversable painting" that included a frozen-fountain-like sculptural form—made of piled garden chairs, children’s bathtubs and plastic baskets—that reached a glass ceiling and echoed the museum's outdoor fountain.
Stockholder was also commissioned to produce outdoor, temporary installations. ''Flooded Chambers Maid'' (2009,
Madison Square Park
Madison Square is a public square formed by the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The square was named for Founding Father James Madison, the fourth president of the United St ...
) combined industrial materials, blue rubber mulch, bleachers, buckets, bins and a free-form garden into a vibrant, three-dimensional
Constructivist-like painting that visitors sat, lunched and played on.
For ''Color Jam'' (2012), she blanketed the four corners and buildings surrounding a busy downtown Chicago intersection in swaths of burnt orange, lime green and turquoise, creating an effect the ''New York Times'' deemed "
Christo
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009), known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, were artists noted for their large-scale, site-specific environmental installations, often large landmarks a ...
meets
Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...
."
[Blair, Gwenda]
"At a Busy Intersection, Going Beyond Red, Yellow and Green,"
''The New York Times'', June 5, 2012. Retrieved January 12, 2022.[Weber, Nathan]
''The New York Times'', June 6, 2012. Retrieved January 12, 2022.[Caro, Mark]
''Chicago Tribune'', June 4, 2012. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
"Assists" and late series, 2015–
With the "Assists" series, Stockholder extended her exploration of fluidity and interstitial elements such as platforms and pedestals.
Her "assists" are modular sculptures that can only stand upright when strapped to a large, commonplace auxiliary object (not considered part of the work), such as a chair or piano.
[Moffitt, Evan]
"Jessica Stockholder,"
''Frieze'', September 29, 2016. Retrieved January 6, 2022. They were exhibited in several shows beginning in 2015,
[August, Laura]
"Jessica Stockholder, Relational Aesthetics and Robert Davidson, U and Eye at The Contemporary Austin,"
''Arts and Culture Texas'', November 1, 2018. Retrieved January 14, 2022.[Szewczyk, Monica. "Jessica Stockholder's 'Assists' or Autonomy in Infancy and Old Age,]
''Jessica Stockholder: Stuff Matters''
Laurie Cluitmans et al., Milan Mousse Publishing,/Centraal Museum Utrecht, 2019. Retrieved January 6, 2022. including
Art Basel
Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel (Switzerland), Miami Beach (US), Hong Kong and Paris. Art Basel provides a platform for galleries to show and sell their work to buyers, an ...
2018.
[Russeth, Andrew]
"Parcours, Hardcore: A Look Around Art Basel’s Public Section, with Works by Pierre Huyghe, Jessica Stockholder, Nina Beier, and More,"
''ARTnews'', June 14, 2008. Retrieved January 12, 2022.[McGivern, Hannah. "In pictures: From treading on taxidermy to sounds from Basel's sewers," ''The Art Newspaper'', June 12, 2018.]
The show "Door Hinges" (
Kavi Gupta
Kavi Gupta is a contemporary art gallery owned by gallerist Kavi Gupta. Headquartered in the Near West Side, Chicago, West Loop neighborhood of Chicago, the gallery operates multiple exhibition spaces as well as Kavi Gupta Editions, a publishing ...
, 2015) featured three assists strapped with vinyl belts to a piano, vintage desk, and Smart electric car, respectively, and an ephemeral installation with a snaking catwalk, titled ''A Log or a freezer''. It also included a separate exhibit curated by Stockholder ("Assisted"), juxtaposing her work with that of sixteen artists who influenced her.
[Myers, Terry]
"Jessica Stockholder,"
''The Brooklyn Rail'', November 2015. Retrieved January 7, 2022.[Cristello, Stephanie. "Jessica Stockholder, Door Hinges," ''ArtReview'', September 2015.] ''Artforums Caroline Picard called it "a profound conversation between objects and aesthetic experiments, highlighting
dynamic, polyvocal network."
"The Guests All Crowded Into the Dining Room" (Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 2016) was an immersive exhibition including two assists, autonomous sculptures, and an ephemeral "situation" made up of a winding, scalable platform-stage that enabled the viewing of drawings which were hung over swaths of orange and pink painted on the gallery walls.
[Frankel, David. "Jessica Stockholder, Mitchell-Innes & Nash," ''Artforum'', December 2016. Retrieved January 14, 2022.] In 2019, Centraal Museum mounted "Stuff Matters," a large exhibition that Stockholder co-curated with Laurie Cluitmans, in which she incorporated sixty items from the museum's collection, in a way that was analogous to her use of objects in her sculpture. The show included two assists strapped to museum items, sculptures spanning twenty years of her work, and an ephemeral installation.
Stockholder's later work includes the "EWaste" and "Specific Shape/Fixed Object" series. David Pagel described the "EWaste" pieces—reworkings of found electronic devices and hardware into abstract sculptures—as "slyly subversive," tautly composed amalgams combining free-associative speculation with the formal power of Matisse's cut-paper collages.
[Pagel, David]
"In This LA Gallery, One Artist Puts her ‘Digital Thoughts’ into Orbit,"
''Los Angeles Times'', February 22, 2020. Retrieved January 14, 2022. In a 2021 show, Stockholder paired her "specific shapes"—forms hand-painted on walls whose scale changes from one installation to another—with "fixed objects," small sculptures assembled from everyday materials that remain unchanged across installations.
[''The Visualist'']
"Jessica Stockholder: Specific Shapes,"
October 2021. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
Other professional activities
Stockholder has curated several shows of her own work and others. These shows took place at Gorney Bravin & Lee (2003),
Tang Museum ("The Jewel Thief," co-curated with Ian Berry, 2010),
[Princenthal, Nancy. "The Jewel Thief," ''Art in America'', January 5, 2011.] Kavi Gupta ("Assisted," 2015),
The Contemporary Austin
The Contemporary Austin, originally known as the Austin Museum of Art, is Austin, Texas's primary contemporary art museum, consisting of two locations and an art school. The Contemporary Austin reflects the spectrum of contemporary art through e ...
(2018, work by
Robert Davidson),
Centraal Museum (with Laurie Cluitmans, 2019),
and OGR Turino (2021).
[OGR Torino]
Jessica Stockholder – Cut a rug a round square,"
Events. Retrieved January 6, 2022.
From 1999 to 2011, Stockholder was director and professor of graduate studies in sculpture at Yale University.
[Yale School of Art]
Jessica Stockholder
Retrieved January 6, 2022.[Howard, Christopher]
"Jessica Stockholder Is CAA’s Convocation Speaker,"
''College Art Association News'', December 17, 2013. Retrieved January 6, 2022. She was faculty chair of the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago from 2011 to 2018, and retired from teaching in 2024.
Recognition
Stockholder has received a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
(1996);
awards from the
Lehmbruck Museum
The Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum - Center for International Sculpture is a museum in Duisburg, Germany.
Sculptures by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, after whom the museum is named, make up a large part of its collection. However, the museum has a sub ...
in Germany (2001),
[Müller-Tamm, Pia]
''Jessica Stockholder--August Seeling-Preis Des Freundeskreises''
K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 2002. Retrieved January 7, 2022. Smithsonian American Art Museum (Lucelia Artist Award, 2007),
Anonymous Was A Woman (2012),
and
American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...
;
[American Academy of Arts and Letters]
2021 Art Award Winners
Retrieved January 7, 2022.[American Academy of Arts and Letters]
2014 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts
Retrieved January 7, 2022. and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts,
New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...
and
Canada Council
The Canada Council for the Arts (), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporations of Canada, Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It is Canada's public arts funder, with a mandate to ...
.
She was elected to the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Frederick Styles Agate, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, an ...
in 2011, and awarded honorary doctorate degrees by
Emily Carr College of Art and
Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago is a Private college, private art college in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1890, it has 6,493 students (as of fall 2021) pursuing degrees in more than 60 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. It i ...
, in 2010 and 2013, respectively.
[National Academy of Design]
Jessica Stockholder
, National Academicians. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
Stockholder's work belongs to the public collections of American museums including MoMA,
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, is an art museum located adjacent to Delaware Park, Buffalo, New York, United States.
The museum shows modern art and contemporary art. It is directly opposite Buff ...
,
[Albright-Knox Art Gallery]
''Untitled'', Jessica Stockholder
Artworks. Retrieved January 6, 2022. Art Institute of Chicago,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum).
LACMA was founded in 1961 ...
,
[Los Angeles County Museum of Art]
''Untitled'', Jessica Stockholder
Collections. Retrieved January 6, 2022. MOCA LA,
[Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles]
Jessica Stockholder
Artists. Retrieved January 14, 2022. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the list of largest art museums, 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 painting ...
,
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...
,
[National Gallery of Art]
Jessica Stockholder, ''Untitled'', 1994
Collection. Retrieved January 6, 2022. Orange County Museum of Art
The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. The museum's collection comprises more than 4,500 objects, with a concentration ...
,
[Orange County Museum of Art]
Jessica Stockholder, 1996
Collection. Retrieved January 6, 2022. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...
,
[San Francisco Museum of Modern Art]
Jessica Stockholder
Artist. Retrieved January 6, 2022. and the Whitney Museum.
[Whitney Museum of American Art]
Jessica Stockholder
Artists. Retrieved January 6, 2022. It belongs to the international collections of the British Museum,
Carré d'Art
The Carré d'art at Nîmes in southern France houses a museum of contemporary art and the city's municipal library. Constructed of glass, concrete and steel, it faces the Maison carrée, a perfectly preserved Roman temple that dates from the very ...
,
[Carré d'Art]
Jessica Stockholder, ''Sans titre'', 1992
Artworks. Retrieved January 6, 2022. Centraal Museum,
[Centraal Museum]
Jessica Stockholder
Creators. Retrieved January 6, 2022. GAM Torino,
[GAM Torino]
"A Collection without Boundaries,"
Events. Retrieved January 6, 2022. Le Consortium,
[Le Consortium]
"New York: The 1980s; Part II."
Retrieved January 7, 2022. Lehmbruck Museum
The Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum - Center for International Sculpture is a museum in Duisburg, Germany.
Sculptures by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, after whom the museum is named, make up a large part of its collection. However, the museum has a sub ...
,
[Lehmbruck Museum]
Our Artists
Retrieved January 7, 2022. Mumok
Mumok (from the full name ; "Museum of modern art, Ludwig Foundation, Vienna") is a museum in the Museumsquartier in Vienna, Austria.
The museum has a collection of 10,000 modern and contemporary art works, including major works from Andy Warh ...
,
[Mumok]
Jessica Stockholder
Collection. Retrieved January 7, 2022. Musée National d'Art Moderne
The Musée National d'Art Moderne (; "National Museum of Modern Art") is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in the 4th arrondissement of Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou. In 2021 it ranked 10th in the list of ...
(Centre Pompidou),
[Centre Pompidou]
Jessica Stockholder
Artists. Retrieved January 6, 2022. National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...
,
[National Gallery of Australia]
Jessica Stockholder, ''Buff Ambit'', 2006
Collection. Retrieved January 7, 2022. Städel
The Städel, officially the ''Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie'', is an art museum in Frankfurt, with one of the most important collections in Germany. The museum is located at the Museumsufer on the Sachsenhausen bank of t ...
,
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam,
and
Vancouver Art Gallery
The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The museum occupies a adjacent to Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, making it the largest art museum in Western Canada by building size. Designed by Fr ...
, among others.
Stockholder's work was included in the 2021 exhibition ''
Women in Abstraction
Women in Abstraction. Another History of Abstraction in the 20th Century or ''Elles font l'abstraction. Une autre histoire de l'abstraction au XXe siècle'' was a major exhibition of 20th century abstract art created by women. It was curated by ...
'' at the
Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...
.
References
External links
Jessica Stockholderwebsite
Jessica StockholderArt21 profile
Interview with Jessica Stockholder , What is normal ''ATP Diary''
A Project for ''Artforum'' by Jessica StockholderJessica Stockholder , Stuff Matters 2019
'Color Jam': A conversation with Jessica Stockholder 2012
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stockholder, Jessica
1959 births
Living people
American contemporary artists
Canadian contemporary artists
American women sculptors
Canadian women sculptors
Yale University alumni
University of Victoria alumni
Artists from Seattle
University of Chicago faculty
Sculptors from Washington (state)