Jessica Stockholder: Tied to be fit
Date: January 15 – March 6, 2021
Place: Max Estrella Gallery, Santo Tomé 6, patio 28004 Madrid, España Max Estrella Gallery
Max Estrella is delighted to present Jessica Stockholder’s (Seattle, 1959) most recent work. The exhibition is titled Tied to be fit, and includes a series of pieces named Corona Homeworks and the installation Assist: Tied to be fit – Middle Period, which gives the exhibition its title.
Jessica Stockholder is considered one of the most influential contemporary artists of our time. Through architecture and public space, she develops a sculptural practice that results both in monumental creations and in assemblages of different materials and shapes. Symbiosis between color and materials generates pictorial and sculptural forms that resonate in unison, lacking any hierarchies. Both lines of work are present here, her third exhibition at Max Estrella.
In the artist’s words, “The Homeworks were made in my home during the time that my studio, which is on the campus of the University of Chicago, was inaccessible to me during the Coronavirus lockdown. They were made with various different kinds of paper, fabrics, paint, markers, pencil crayons, glue and a sewing machine. At the outset I aimed to make one every day. How we manage to live and work with the limits of our circumstances is how we generate meaning and beauty. I took up the challenge presented by my reduced circumstances with interest and pleasure, and from the quiet of my home I put together these works while I watched, and felt, the weight of tragedy unfolding around me.”
Assist: Tied to be fit – Middle Period is the most recent addition to a series of works titled Assists. These works don’t stand up on their own and require some kind of a prop. The piece was fabricated in Madrid following direction embodied by a small maquette. The rope was the starting point – left over from elsewhere. The rope, like the roots of a very aggressive bamboo plant, snakes its way, back and forth, through the gallery walls. And, like a piece of hardware, the rest of the work is bolted to the floor and the wall, making clear that though ‘elsewhere’ may figure highly, this installation of the work is here and now beckoning to the breathing, moving body, as if to offer a seat.
Jessica Stockholder lives and works in Chicago. She has exhibited extensively in United States and Europe, in prominent institutions such as the Dia Center for the Arts, Beacon; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Middelheimmuseum, Antwerp; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Power Plant, Toronto; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; PS1 New York; SITE, Santa Fé; Venice Biennial; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen and The Contemporary, Austin, among others. Her work is part of numerous collections, including the Chicago Art Institute, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, LACMA, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Centraal Museum, Utrecht and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. During her career, she has received numerous awards, such as the Lucelia Artist by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 2018, she was chosen for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.