Jessica Stockholder, Specific Shapes

Kavi Gupta proudly presents Specific Shapes, a solo exhibition of new works by Jessica Stockholder, acclaimed visual artist, elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Guggenheim Fellow, Anonymous Was A Woman grantee, and recipient of the Lucelia Artist Award from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The exhibition takes its name from Stockholder’s latest body of work—the series Specific Shape / Fixed Object—which is introduced here alongside a selection of new works from three other ongoing series: AB Photos with EWaste; Assists; and Text / Poetry.

Each Specific Shape is united with a color and paired with a companion Fixed Object made with a collection of materials gathered from many realms of life. Specific Shapes are fundamentally abstract, painted by hand on the wall, and variable in scale from one installation to another. The Fixed Object is concrete and unchanged as the piece moves from one locale to another.

 

As Stockholder puts it, “This work is about relationships and the limits of control.”  

 

The delectable, punk-rock mish-mashery of everyday ephemera Stockholder mobilizes throughout this exhibition includes such wide-ranging stuff as electronic waste, tree branches, metal hardware, bungee cords, broken dishes, furniture, yarn, and paint. In this manifestation, the works hold court inside gallery walls, but like everything Stockholder makes, it might manifest wherever a world exists to support it in its intent—which, simply, is to make us stop, look, and think for ourselves about what we see.