Jessica Stockholder English 1995

Born in Vancouver and based in New York, Jessica Stockholder explodes the boundaries between painting, sculpture and architecture to construct a new perceptual space. Found objects, ranging from oranges to neon tubes, discarded household fabrics and decontextualized building materials are massed and lyrically intertwined with profusions of vivid colour. Her architectonic installations engulf the viewer, recalling Schwitters' Dadaist collages, spliced with the formal concerns of 1950s abstract painting and redefined through a postmodern sensibility. Her work explores the body in social and cultural space to generate a complex formal and conceptual experience.

The Survey, by art critic and poet Barry Schwabsky, examines the evolution of Stockholder's work since the 1980s. New York novelist Lynne Tillman and the artist take the reader on a guided tour through pictorial space. Lynne Tillman, Curator of the Dia Center for the Arts in New York, looks in depth at a single installation, Sweet for Three Oranges (1995). Further insight into Stockholder's practice is revealed through her selection of texts by psychologist Julian Jaynes and philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis for the Artist's Choice. The Artist's Writings include early interviews and chronicle works in progress.