Our ongoing Visiting Artist series continues with Chicago-based artist & UVic alumna Jessica Stockholder, who will present a free illustrated public talk at 7:30pm Wed, Oct 2, in room A162 of UVic’s Visual Arts building.
Born in Seattle, Jessica Stockholder has exhibited widely in museums and galleries internationally. She graduated from UVic’s Visual Art department (BFA 1982) before receiving her MA from Yale (’85) and is currently chair of the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Art. Her sprawling constructions have played a crucial role in expanding the dialogue between sculpture and painting.
Stockholder merges seemingly disparate, everyday objects, such as lampposts, car parts, hoses, containers, extension cords, lumber, car parts, carpets and furniture. Drawing attention to these ordinary materials, she engages the sensuality and pleasure evoked by colour and formal order in an effort to call attention to the edges of understanding.
Her use of colour is also pivotal as she orchestrates an intersection of pictorial and physical space as she probes how meaning derives from physicality. Stockholder maps out a constructed world informed by numerous artistic traditions, including abstract expressionism, color field painting, installation art, and minimalism.