Jessica Stockholder: Pucker
March 3 – May 14, 2005
Dieu Donne Papermill
433 Broome Street
New York, NY 10013
T 212.226.0573
F 212.226.6088
info [at] dieudonne.org
www.dieudonne.org
Dieu Donne Papermill is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Jessica Stockholder entitled Pucker featuring new artwork produced during the artist’s 2004 Lab Grant residency at Dieu Donne Papermill. The show will feature five unique artworks and three editioned pieces. There will be a reception for the artist on Thursday, March 3rd from 6 to 8pm.
Known for her installations that integrate an array of materials, textures and colors, Jessica Stockholder worked at Dieu Donne Papermill with Dieu Donne Artistic Director Paul Wong to produce a body of innovative works in handmade paper possessing the vibrant palette and multidimensional qualities characteristic of her sculptural work. To create these multi-layered works, Stockholder capitalized on the adaptable qualities inherent in the papermaking medium by embedding photographs and fabric into the wet sheets and pressing objects onto the surfaces to create imprints. Stockholder often bridged the layers of collage elements by adding layers of pigmented pulp paint. Furthermore, the incorporation of found materials combined with the different types and layers of pulps used caused the paper to dry so that it puckers around certain elements, lending a tactility that Stockholder’s work often possesses. In Tape Measure Square, Stockholder created a base sheet duo-toned in pink and blue and built up multiple layers of shapes and imagery: a blue pulp painted grid, a translucent oval hovering over the grid, an embedded photo of a red cooler with an electrical cord and tape measure, and yellow and red paper pulp squares collaged on top. This layering process and cockling that radiates from the center of the work lends dimension and an expressive sense of movement to this and many of the works in the exhibition.
In the catalogue essay that accompanies the exhibition Faye Hirsch writes, “Vibrant, pulsating color is the overriding impression conveyed by the several dozen works that Jessica Stockholder made during her Dieu Donné Lab Grant residency. Paper pulp holds hues in a very special way; having absorbed the pigments into its very stuff-literally, dissolved and reconstituted fabric-the resulting work is saturated with color, which can be so vivid that it conveys the impression of something almost purely optical that hovers in our field of vision. A certain material vagueness in pigmented paper pulp thus seems ideal for Stockholder, who has always enjoyed the erasure of distinctions: between gross matter and art, composition and formlessness, narrative and abstraction, sculpture and painting.”
As a culmination of Stockholder’s Lab Grant residency, Dieu Donne published number 7 of its Lab Grant publication series that includes an essay by Faye Hirsch of Art in America. Copies are available upon request.
JESSICA STOCKHOLDER [b. 1959, Seattle, WA] received a BFA from the University of Victoria in British Columbia and an MFA in sculpture from Yale University. She has shown extensively in the US and abroad. A career survey of her work, organized by the Blaffer Gallery in Houston, TX is travelling the US and currently being shown at the Weatherspoon Art Gallery in North Carolina. Her work is featured in numerous public collections including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Saatchi and Saatchi Collection, London, UK; and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY. Stockholder is represented by Mitchell-Innes & Nash and currently lives and works in New Haven, CT where she is both a professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Sculpture at Yale University.
Founded in 1976, Dieu Donne Papermill, Inc. is an artist workspace dedicated to the creation, promotion, and preservation of contemporary art using the hand papermaking process. In support of this mission, Dieu Donne collaborates with artists and partners with the professional visual arts community.
Gallery hours are Thursday through Saturday, 12 – 6 pm.
