In Jessica Stockholder’s site-related works, a fictive world intersects the real one. The artist uses everyday objects as part of her toolkit, making use of their color, scale, and materiality, and conceives compositions that enter into a dialogue with their surroundings. Depending on the position and pace of passers-by, pictures form and fade, adding new, temporary perspectives to a familiar site.
In her sculpture for the Kunstplatz Graben, titled Slip Slidin‘ Away, the shapes of a car, a street lamp, and a flag or slide, together with a geometric floor painting, create a situation that appears concrete and abstract at the same time. A signpost, which on one side reflects its surroundings, and on the other shows an aerial view of the sculpture, emphasizes both the performative and pictorial character of the scene. “We humans use metaphors to build elaborate abstract and concrete structures to live within,” says Stockholder. “This is how I find form to be full of significance.”

Slip Slidin‘ Away will be on display in Vienna’s Kunstplatz Graben from June 28 to November 5, 2019.