Play on Surfaces & Surfing

May 17 –June 7, 2018

Opening reception and book signing | Thursday, May 17, 4:30–6:30pm

Joseph Regenstein Library, 1100 E. 57th Street, 1st floor
Hours: Mondays to Thursdays, 8:30am–6pm; Fridays, 8:30am–5pm; and Saturdays 9am–1pm

Artist statement about the installation

Three works are installed in the library where they exist in and amongst other objects that they are similar to.  Each of the works, Sorrow, Keeping Abreast, and Ceded takes as its staring point a generic desktop electronic device. These devices are all produced in multiple; in this way they are part of a grid of production and distribution that is much bigger than they are, and each one is greeted with an expectation that it will be the same as many others. These sculptures surf the wave of that expectation, and though each work takes a generic electronic box as its point of origin, the work is in the end unique.

All surfaces present an opportunity for illusion and storytelling. The surfaces of these boxes are replete with meaning before I get near them. They ask to be taken for granted. They present some small allure for the new owner, but the colors are neutral, the two-toned color scheme they often sport is quiet, and allows for stylistic change from year to year. Their exterior bears little relation to their interior function; the exterior surface of the box is designed to insinuate itself into our lives, to sit amongst the designs of interior home, office and library spaces.

My interventions in these surfaces propose variation, eccentricity, drama, humor, beauty and discomfort; new possibilities, and the suggestion that individual affect matters, are injected into the flow of the grid that these machines are a part of.

—Jessica Stockholder, April 2018

Organized by Laura Steward, Curator of Public Art, Smart Museum of Art.