Jessica Stockholder: Kissing The Wall: Works, 1988-2003

Through her use of color and assemblage, Jessica Stockholder challenges familiar generic boundaries between painting and sculpture, while de-familiarizing the experience of the exhibition space--not to mention giving the impression of a K-Mart store that's been bulldozed by a group of feminist abstract expressionists. In 1988, Stockholder created the self-contained assemblage "Kissing the Wall #2, an old-fashion projector screen wrapped in newspaper and plaster that stands like a bad child facing a florescent lamp secured to the wall. This seminal work uses the gallery wall as a screen kissed by various objects in what the artist calls "an emotionally charged event." Found objects become actors in the drama of space and color, in a work exemplary of the many objects gathered together for this retrospective look at Stockholder's self-contained assemblages since 1988. Included are an interview, scholarly essays, an annotated chronology, and a detailed exhibition and publication history.