This work by Jessica Stoller debuted in the group show Surface is Only a Material Vehicle for Spirit at Kavi Gupta in 2021, which was guest curated by sculptor Kennedy Yanko. The series from which this piece comes includes vessel-like and mirrored wall works, all ceramic and porcelain. Stoller hand builds them. The series spotlights juxtapositions between incongruous elements, such as the beautiful and the grotesque.

Says Stoller, "The grotesque in the work is like the historical view of art, not the pejorative part of it, pushing ideas of taste and beauty. Hybridity, open-ended-ness, the body in motion, pushing against an idealized, classical, contained body. These works are very female centric. They include the decorative, ornamentation, things that get associated with women and then devalued."

Stoller is a ceramic artist whose work creates tension by subverting the associations people have with her materials and forms. She is interested in the dichotomies presented by her medium and subject matter. She relates the tactile, sensuous, and complicated process of working with ceramics to the various reactions viewers have to the work—especially as they first encounter the ornamentation she adds to her sculptures, and then slowly confront the more difficult and surprising aspects of the composition. Instantly recognizable elements in Stoller’s sculptures compete for attention with elements in the work that are askew and strange. Stoller deftly finds the balance between the two, using the delicacy and beauty of the material to seduce viewers, until the disjointed visual cues finally stifle and complicate their gaze.

“I like to play with materials that don’t always do what I want them to do,” Stoller says. “It’s rewarding and also arduous. Hopefully, the works are just as unnerving and strange to viewers.”

Stoller earned her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI, in 2006. She has been awarded a Chenven Foundation Grant and Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and is a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award Nominee. Her work has been exhibited at the Fondation Bernardaud, Limoges, France; Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA; Bronx Museum of the Arts and Wave Hill, Bronx, NY; and Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, Detroit, MI, among others. She has had artist residencies at the Shigaraki Ceramic Culture Park, Koka City, Shiga-Pref., Japan; Museum of Arts and Design New York, NY; Kohler Arts/Industry Program, Kohler, WI; and Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY.