Louise
Bourgeois |
Niki de Saint Phalle| Eva
Hesse | Rebecca
Horn
Yayoi Kusama |
Annette Messager
| Jessica Stockholder
from Jessica Stockholder, Phaidon Press Limited
Jessica Stockholder
Jessica Stockholder was born in Seattle, Washington in 1959 and grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia. She studied art at the University of British Columbia and Yale University. In 1983, when she began graduate studies at Yale, she created Installation in my Father's Backyard in Vancouver. This installation included large found objects and paint. These were related to the immediate architecture, in this case, her father's garage. All of her following installations include and expand upon these elements.
Stockholder studied painting as well as sculpture and uses much painterly color in her work. The found objects and raw material Stockholder uses are commonplace, some elements even bordering on garbage. She assembles these objects in such a way as to disorient the viewer and bring magic and possibility to objects we normally perceive as having little aesthetic value.
In viewing one of her installations, one must walk around the piece; it is impossible to take in from one point of view. Stockholder extensively photographs the installations before disassembling them. Rarely can her pieces be sold as commodities, although she does make collages and smaller assemblages.
The piece shown here, It's Not Over 'til the Fat Lady Sings, from 1987, was named by her grandmother. It includes a familial history of objects from her parent's home in Vancouver. In speaking of her work, Stockholder often discusses formal issues, such as how one color draws the eye to another field of color. However, in this case she speaks of the work being about trying to become comfortable with the material world.
This particular installation includes a platform for the chest of drawers, a device she often employs. Stockholder also often adds papier mache growths or extensions to objects, as pictured here with the chest of drawers. This newspaper is coming from above and has what appears to be metal legs, as a result it suggests a creature enveloping the chest. The newspapers are old and yellowed, perhaps representing the past. The wall stuffed with old clothes appears to be another reference to family history. This work, as with all of Stockholder's work, is complex and impossible to reveal in a single photo.
