![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.artoronto.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Jessica-Stockholder-1_opt.jpg\" "\\"Jessica")
<\/a>Jessica Stockholder in front of her work, Green Shape and Gaming,<\/em> 2013. Photo: Alice Tallman<\/p>\nMs. Stockholder is best known for her large-scale three dimensional pieces, however the works in this show are mostly on paper.\u00a0Starting her career in the 1980\u2019s, she was influenced by Minimalism, and by artists such as Sol LeWitt. Her response to the geometrically sleek essence of minimalism is through bright colours and forms both geometric and abstract.<\/p>\n
Stockholder with her mixed media works on paper sets out to explore both the alphabet in the process of becoming language as well as the human body, particularly the belly.\u00a0She merges these two together and illustrates how they are connected. Her abstracted drawings of the belly morph and become a part of a universal pictorial dialogue of undulating sinuous curves, in which the human body is both a landscape and a language.<\/p>\n Each piece is marked with unique and eccentric particularities illustrated through line, shape, and colour. With the artist\u2019s emphasis on the alphabet, Stockholder continues to explore the repetition of writing out the alphabet and how this repetition helps to evolve language. With these works there is a collision of the opposing realms of formalism and abstraction. These images are both real and unreal, adhering to an autonomous ordering of visual perception.<\/p>\n I (A.T) spoke with Jessica Stockholder (J.S)\u00a0about her works after her show opened here in Toronto in April.<\/p>\n A.T. You discussed your interest in the alphabet, can you describe what your own artistic language is composed of?<\/span><\/p>\n J.S. The words you use in your question \u201cmy own\u201d can refer to the way I use shared language, convention, habit, and metaphor. \u201cMy own\u201d can also refer to more idiosyncratic invention that isn\u2019t shared. My work leans heavily on minimalism, though it doesn\u2019t appear minimal. The works of the Minimalists opened up a space for attention to physical experience in relation to apprehension, and called attention to the dumb fact of its existence; they valued the experience of the body the most. Minimalism\u2019s intersection with the world around it was also pointed in relation to the grid. The grid is a very human structure. Geometric grids don\u2019t often exist in nature. We invent them in our city planning and inside almost every building we make. The ever-present grid is full of all kinds of metaphors. Within my work, I try to access idiosyncratic invention, that isn\u2019t necessarily rational, but that is more difficult to discover, more difficult to apprehend.<\/p>\n A.T. In working on paper rather than in the three-dimensional space, do you feel that there is a difference in the space? Are they similar in any way?<\/span><\/p>\n J.S. No they\u2019re quite different. Paper presents a neutral, blank, emptiness. Whereas a room is always a different thing, containing different light, different characteristics and a more idiosyncratic set of limitations within which one can work.<\/span><\/p>\n A.T Your works are composed of a diverse range of materials and objects; what determines your selection?<\/span><\/p>\n J.S. In some ways it is the case that I could make art out of any material. I mean at some essential level, what I\u2019m interested in is the intersection between the things I am constructing and inventing, and how that\u00a0is materializing. I’m interested in the way in which materials are meaningful. Usually not in a connotative way, but in other essential ways – like how plastic is made and where it comes from. I\u2019m interested in the design that is embedded in materials; how\u00a0each object have different kinds of significance and resonance in the world. There are historical references, values, hierarchies and class structures embedded in all made objects. I am aware of this information in the objects and I\u2019m happy that it is there to use.<\/p>\n<\/a>Jessica Stockholder, Fish<\/em>, 2013, Litho print, acrylic paint, collage, graphite and coloured pencil on paper, 29 1.2 x 18 inches. Courtesy of\u00a0 Barbara Edwards Contemporary<\/p>\n<\/a>Jessica Stockholder, Puzzled<\/em>, 2013, litho print, pencil color, acrylic paint, glue, plastic parts and graphite, 22 x 30 inches. Courtesy of\u00a0 Barbara Edwards Contemporary<\/p>\n<\/a>Jessica Stockholder, Story of Angle #3<\/em>, 2013, graphite and coloured pencil on paper, 11 x 14 inches. Courtesy of\u00a0 Barbara Edwards Contemporary<\/p>\n<\/a><\/span>Jessica Stockholder, Green Shape and Gaming<\/em>, 2013, collage, litho print, pencil color, acrylic paint and graphite on paper, 23 x 15 3\/4 inches. Courtesy of\u00a0 Barbara Edwards Contemporary<\/span><\/p>\n