Jessica Stockholder: For Events

Two people stroll across a low s-shaped platform sculpture

Featuring PLATFORM
a series of programs
April 1–May 5, 2024

Hutchinson Courtyard, The University of Chicago, 1131 E. 57th Street

This exhibition honors artist Jessica Stockholder (b. 1959) on the occasion of her retirement from the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. The installation is anchored by a single sculpture, For Events (2015), which encapsulates the artist’s decades-long consideration of how objects encounter one another: how they support themselves and are in turn supported. For Events is an elevated, s-shaped platform comprised of plywood and fiberglass—materials at once ordinary, vivid, and, as the artist has suggested, “perhaps even beautiful.” The sculpture can be taken in and appreciated at a remove or engaged as a functional stage, scalable by steps on either end. In this way, it invites viewers to enter the work, to be put on display. “I’m interested in conveying an experience having to do with the difficulty of having things cohere,” Stockholder has stated. “A lack of definition, or a possibility for expansion lurking in the background of everything we make.”

For Events raises questions about categories: sculpture and architecture, artwork and viewer, object and performance, art and institution. Devised by a single artist, it asks us to consider the complexity inherent in making art independently while living, working, and thinking in relation to others. In keeping with the invitational “For” in the work’s title, the sculpture will be periodically activated by Stockholder’s former students and colleagues, including Kevin Beasley, Devin T. Mays, Gabriel Moreno, Josiah McElheny, and Anna Tsouhlarakis. It will also host various forms of engagement by University of Chicago students, faculty, and staff, ranging from impromptu meetings, course discussions, and daily rehearsals to poetry readings, music concerts, and voguing workshops. Please find the schedule of PLATFORM events below.

Part of the collection of the Smart Museum of Art, For Events is installed in Hutchinson Courtyard, a hub of student life grounded by the neighboring Reynolds Club student center. Situated at the heart of the University’s campus, the sculpture engages directly with its academic setting and community, instigating a campus-wide conversation around the intersection of public sculpture, experimental performance, and scholarly research.

In conjunction with Jessica Stockholder: For Events, visitors are invited to explore two related installations. The artist book-cum-sculpture Led Almost by My Tie (2007), a collaboration between Stockholder and poet Jeremy Sigler, will be displayed in the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center in the Joseph Regenstein Library. CWAC Exhibitions will present Alex Da Corte: A Love Letter in the Cochrane-Woods Art Center.

About

Jessica Stockholder: For Events is curated by Jenny Harris, Clara Nizard, and Michael Stablein, Jr. in partnership with Logan Center Exhibitions and Art in Public Spaces. Additional support provided by anonymous donors, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT), Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry & Expression, the College at The University of Chicago, Committee on Theater and Performance Studies, Department of Art History, Division of the Humanities, Franke Institute Fund, Jack and Sandra Guthman, Institute for the Formation of Knowledge, Open Practice Committee in the Department of Visual Arts, Reva & David Logan Center for the Arts, Smart Museum of Art, UChicago Arts, UChicago GRAD, UChicago Student Centers, University of Chicago Library, Valerie Carberry and Richard Wright, and the Visual Resources Center.

PLATFORM Programs

Opening Celebration
Featuring Christine Mehring, Gabriel Moreno, Jeremy Sigler, and Augusta Read Thomas
Monday, April 1, 2024
5–7 pm

Josiah McElheny
Imaginary Modernism: Hilma af Klint and Blinky Palermo
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
7 pm

Kevin Beasley
Plastic/Soul/Capture/Play – Notes in Public
Saturday, April 6, 2024
6:30 PM

Anna Tsouhlarakis
VOX CLAMANTIS IN CHICAGO
Monday, April 8, 2024
12 pm

Devin T. Mays
In Concert #1: Hold, Weight
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
5–7 pm

Prof. Pauline Goul & Prof. Chad Córdova
On Friendship
Wednesday, April 10
4:30-7:20 PM

Storytime with Carmenita Peoples & The Regenstein Library
Imagination, Art, and Nature Storytime
Saturday, April 13, 2024
11 am

shaman and feifei
freemeditation interactive performance
Monday, April 15, 2024
11 am

Ceyhun
Musical Performance
Friday, April 19, 2024
12 pm

Jake Quinlan
Lived With, durational performance
Saturday, April 20 to Sunday, April 21, 2024
12 pm–12 pm (24 hour activation)

Lily Scherlis
“What Went Wrong at Big Brain?”
Monday, April 22, 2024
12pm-12:30 PM

Mary Mulcahey
Dabke Through the Decades
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
6 pm

Lauren Sheely
For (Dance) Events: An Exploratory Movement Workshop
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
12–1 pm

Fred Schmidt-Arenales
Readings from Protect our Parks Inc. v. Chicago Park District and City of Chicago
Thursday, April 25, 2024
5–8 pm

Timnah Rosenshine
Divine Company (For Events Version)
Friday, April 26, 2024
6:30 pm

Damon Green
Vogue Workshop
Saturday, April 27, 2024
1–3 pm

An Evening of Poetry
Featuring readings by Kai Ihns, Imani Elizabeth Jackson, Srikanth Reddy, Margaret Ross, Robyn Schiff, and Nick Twemlow
Saturday, April 27, 2024
5:30–7:30 pm

Tara Aisha Willis
Dance Improvisation in Theory & Practice course performance
Monday, April 29, 2024
5–6:20 pm

Hansel and Gretel, a collective tribute to Pope.L by DoVA alumni
Saturday, May 4, 2024
1–3 pm

Undergraduate Composition Showcase
String Quartets by Leo Mehring-Keller and Cory Turnbaugh
Sunday, May 5, 2024
12–1 pm

About Jessica Stockholder

Over the past four decades, Jessica Stockholder’s energetic, cacophonous, and idiosyncratic works have expanded the dialogue between painting and sculpture. Often incorporating the surrounding architecture, Stockholder juxtaposes everyday objects—electrical cords, plastic bags, discarded furniture—defining new and ambiguous situations that draw attention to their formal and aesthetic qualities. Stockholder has exhibited widely in North America and Europe at such venues as Centre Pompidou, Paris; MoMA PS1; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Renaissance Society; and the Venice Biennale. Her work is represented in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, among others. Stockholder received her B.F.A from the University of Victoria in Canada in 1982, her M.F.A. from Yale University in 1985, and honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees from the Emily Carr College of Art in 2010 and Columbia College in 2013. She has received numerous grants including the Lucelia Artist Award from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Anonymous Was A Woman award. In 2018, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. After serving as Director of the Sculpture Department at the Yale School of Art, Stockholder joined the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts faculty where she served as Chair from 2011-2018.

Fabricators

Assistant Director of Logan Center Shops – Rooke Hyde
Project Lead Fabricator – Nick Raffel
Assistant Fabricator – Rebekka Federle-McCabe
Student Fabricators – Grace Donavan-Lafuente, Sana Fessuh, Qianyu ‘Coco’ Fu, Jaden Hamilton, Natalie Jenkins, Jake Quinlan, Abby Starr