This exhibition honors artist Jessica Stockholder (b. 1959) on the occasion of her retirement from the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. The installation is anchored by a single sculpture, For Events (2015), which encapsulates the artist's decades-long consideration of how objects encounter one another: how they support themselves and are in turn supported. For Events is an elevated, s-shaped platform comprised of plywood and fiberglass-materials at once ordinary, vivid, and, as the artist has suggested, "perhaps even beautiful." The sculpture can be taken in and appreciated at a remove or engaged as a functional stage, scalable by steps on either end. In this way, it invites viewers to enter the work, to be put on display. "I'm interested in conveying an experience having to do with the difficulty of having things cohere," Stockholder has stated. "A lack of definition, or a possibility for expansion lurking in the background of everything we make."
For Events raises questions about categories: sculpture and architecture, artwork and viewer, object and performance, art and institution. Devised by a single artist, it asks us to consider the complexity inherent in making art independently while living, working, and thinking in relation to others. In keeping with the invitational "For" in the work's title, the sculpture will be periodically activated by Stockholder's former students and colleagues, including Kevin Beasley, Devin T. Mays, Gabriel Moreno, Josiah McElheny, and Anna Tsouhlarakis. It will also host various forms of engagement by University of Chicago students, faculty, and staff, ranging from impromptu meetings, course discussions, and daily rehearsals to poetry readings, music concerts, and voguing workshops. Please find the schedule of PLATFORM events below.
Part of the collection of the Smart Museum of Art, For Events is installed in Hutchinson Courtyard, a hub of student life grounded by the neighboring Reynolds Club student center. Situated at the heart of the University's campus, the sculpture engages directly with its academic setting and community, instigating a campus-wide conversation around the intersection of public sculpture, experimental performance, and scholarly research.
