1.Jessica Stockholder, 2. Richard Tuttle, 3. Arturo Herrera, 4. Sarah Sze, 5. Rachel Harrison, 6. Judy Pfaff.
Jessica Stockholder:
Text: © Copyright, Journal of Contemporary Art, Inc. and the authors.
(Extracts.)
"It doesn’t matter what I use. It can be anything. What’s interesting is how what I’m doing combines with the stuff I use, but then it’s not entirely true to say that. I also choose things for particular reasons, though not according to a particular aesthetic. More often I avoid the development of a cohesive look that will too powerfully direct the work in only one direction." 
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"I rely on that tendency to aestheticize as I do on
chance and happenstance. What’s exciting is how the more clearly structured,
more formal, more pictorial side of the work meets the more chaotic — sometimes
very clearly and logically, then bleeding off in all kinds of directions. I
see it as a mesh of Kaprow, Tinguely, and the surrealists on the one hand,
using chaos and chance and making systems out of happenings; and on the other
hand, meshing that kind of thinking with formal painting and minimalism. John
Cage’s thinking also had a lot of influence."
Standing in front of one of my pieces, its size is important in relationship to your size, you feel how heavy it is or what the light is like in the room, and all that kind of information is seen in relation to the pictorial structure in the work. The thing cues you to measure one side against the other, trying to balance it as you would a picture, and for me, looking at things in a pictorial way includes a distancing where the thing that’s pictured is far away and a little static, unchanging, without time. This distancing is exaggerated by the “art” status of the work, which brings with it a feeling of preciousness and the feeling that the work is somehow removed from or above human life. These qualities are seductive and they make me angry. So I place the pictorial in a context where it’s always being poked at. The picture never stands — it’s always getting the rug pulled out from under it.
I also love colour; and colour hasn’t been dealt with much in sculpture.
When did you decide to make smaller, site-independent objects?
Stockholder: When I moved here I had no studio. I was working in my apartment. It didn’t make sense to build installations there, and I didn’t want to have to find a show in order to be able to make my work. So I started to make objects. The first one I made had a light pointed at the wall making a circle of colour. The light uses electricity, which is happening in time; although the work is static, the light gives it a sense of happening. Also, there’s colour on the piece and colour on the wall from the light; the colour on the wall from the light is kind of ephemeral, and it’s not physically attached to the piece, but the two things, the piece and the wall need each other to be a complete thing. So though I was making an object, it broke down a little bit. It wasn’t isolated unto itself. I also like that the smaller pieces are physically easier, more in my control. And I can work out ideas that I later use in installations.
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Could you say
something about how meaning is generated in your work?
Stockholder: My
work often arrives in the world like an idea arrives in your mind. You don’t
quite know where it came from or when it got put together, nevertheless, it’s
possible to take it apart and see that it has an internal logic. I’m trying to
get closer to thinking processes as they exist before the idea is fully formed.
The various parts of my work are multivalent as are the various parts of
dreams. At best, there are many ways to put the pieces together.
RICHARD TUTTLE.
Source: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/richard-tuttle
"Although most of
Tuttle’s prolific artistic output since the beginning of his career in the
1960s has taken the form of three-dimensional objects, he commonly refers to
his work as drawing rather than sculpture, emphasizing the diminutive scale and
idea-based nature of his practice. He subverts the conventions of Modernist
sculptural practice—defined by grand, heroic gestures; monumental scale; and
the “macho” materials of steel, marble, and bronze—and instead creates small,
eccentrically playful objects in decidedly humble, even “pathetic” materials
such as paper, rope, string, cloth, wire, twigs, cardboard, bubble wrap, nails,
Styrofoam, and plywood. "
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Tuttle also manipulates the space in which his objects exist, placing them unnaturally high or oddly low on a wall—forcing viewers to reconsider and renegotiate the white-cube gallery space in relation to their own bodies. Tuttle uses directed light and shadow to further define his objects and their space. Influences on his work include calligraphy (he has a strong interest in the intrinsic power of line), poetry, and language."
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ARTURO HERRERA.
Herrera’s work
includes collage, works on paper, sculpture, relief, wall painting,
photography, and felt wall hangings. His work taps into the viewer’s
unconscious—often intertwining fragments of cartoon characters with abstract
shapes and partially obscured images that evoke memory and recollection. Using
techniques of fragmentation, splicing, and re-contextualization, Herrera’s work
is provocative and open-ended.
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SARAH SZE.
Source:
"In both drawing and sculpture I’m interested
in the depiction of gravity and weightlessness as both an operative and a
disorienting force. I’m thinking about floating, sinking, rising, drifting, and
the resulting fragility, disorientation, and instability."
She
is interested in creating a physical and metaphysical experience through her
complex yet lyrical assemblages of everyday materials. Her drawings, works on
paper, and a series of new works that reflect not only her careful selection
and placement of objects, but also her play between the boundaries of drawing
and sculpture.
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A
series of installations where issues of perspective and choreography—of how the
observer moves through space—are shown to great effect. One element of
Sze’s work that is rarely acknowledged is her preoccupation with perspective,
in particular, the views that appear distant and close within the same picture
plane, frequently seen in Chinese traditional scroll paintings. She has
described this as an interest in scale shifts that result from the absence of a
middle ground, or the transitional space that bridges the foreground and
background.
Sze creates views through the use of line, light, and the
arrangement of materials, which lead the eye across her work, much like the
composition of a drawing. She has created a series of works that
consider the line between two and three-dimensional space. Using the
vertical format of a hanging scroll as a starting point, the works extend from
the wall and are drawn to the floor as they examine illusionary space,
perspective, and the representation of landscape.
Rachel Harrison
Rachel Harrison’s oeuvre challenges conventional narratives of the history of sculpture and how we experience objects as individuals in space and time. Her work forces viewers to slow down, examine it closely, develop narratives from various juxtapositions, and consider social relations in light of the artist’s assertions via the object. Harrison has been described as essentially feminist, rebuking the masculine heroicism of much contemporary and Modernist art. Using commercially available materials such as chicken wire, polystyrene, a stucco foam agent called Parex, paint, and found objects, she makes assemblages that are humorous and bold. Even photographic works, such as her 2007 frieze The Voyage of the Beagle, operate as sculpture.
Harrison’s work has been exhibited widely since the 1990s in shows at the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, and the Walker Art Center, among others, and she was included in the 2002 and 2008 Whitney Biennials.
I want people to be real with art, to be
conscious and present with the object in order to experience it. Sometimes when
I am looking at a painting I might space out and start thinking about something
entirely unrelated. When the painting wakes me back up I see more of what’s
there before me, and it puts me back into the present. This kind of experience
is becoming increasingly important to me as these other aspects of
virtualization, marketing, and branding explode. Maybe I’m starting to think
that artworks need to unfold slowly over time in real space to contest the
instantaneous distribution and circulation of images with which we’ve become so
familiar.
JUDY PFAFF.
"I think of the things about being an artist is that you should be
allowed to test murky, unclear, unsure territory or all you have left are
substitutes that signify these positions. Having it all together is the least
interesting thing in art, in being alive."
Biography
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"Although most of
Tuttle’s prolific artistic output since the beginning of his career in the
1960s has taken the form of three-dimensional objects, he commonly refers to
his work as drawing rather than sculpture, emphasizing the diminutive scale and
idea-based nature of his practice. He subverts the conventions of Modernist
sculptural practice—defined by grand, heroic gestures; monumental scale; and
the “macho” materials of steel, marble, and bronze—and instead creates small,
eccentrically playful objects in decidedly humble, even “pathetic” materials
such as paper, rope, string, cloth, wire, twigs, cardboard, bubble wrap, nails,
Styrofoam, and plywood. "
Tuttle also manipulates the space in which his objects exist, placing them unnaturally high or oddly low on a wall—forcing viewers to reconsider and renegotiate the white-cube gallery space in relation to their own bodies. Tuttle uses directed light and shadow to further define his objects and their space. Influences on his work include calligraphy (he has a strong interest in the intrinsic power of line), poetry, and language."
ARTURO HERRERA.
Herrera’s work
includes collage, works on paper, sculpture, relief, wall painting,
photography, and felt wall hangings. His work taps into the viewer’s
unconscious—often intertwining fragments of cartoon characters with abstract
shapes and partially obscured images that evoke memory and recollection. Using
techniques of fragmentation, splicing, and re-contextualization, Herrera’s work
is provocative and open-ended.
SARAH SZE.
Source:
"In both drawing and sculpture I’m interested
in the depiction of gravity and weightlessness as both an operative and a
disorienting force. I’m thinking about floating, sinking, rising, drifting, and
the resulting fragility, disorientation, and instability."
She
is interested in creating a physical and metaphysical experience through her
complex yet lyrical assemblages of everyday materials. Her drawings, works on
paper, and a series of new works that reflect not only her careful selection
and placement of objects, but also her play between the boundaries of drawing
and sculpture.
A
series of installations where issues of perspective and choreography—of how the
observer moves through space—are shown to great effect. One element of
Sze’s work that is rarely acknowledged is her preoccupation with perspective,
in particular, the views that appear distant and close within the same picture
plane, frequently seen in Chinese traditional scroll paintings. She has
described this as an interest in scale shifts that result from the absence of a
middle ground, or the transitional space that bridges the foreground and
background.
Sze creates views through the use of line, light, and the
arrangement of materials, which lead the eye across her work, much like the
composition of a drawing. She has created a series of works that
consider the line between two and three-dimensional space. Using the
vertical format of a hanging scroll as a starting point, the works extend from
the wall and are drawn to the floor as they examine illusionary space,
perspective, and the representation of landscape.
Sze’s
drawings nearly always comprise alternate views and perspectives in the same
picture planes using simple lines. We are sometimes unsure of the view, whether
we are looking out into the distance or observing something microscopic. Other
works include prints that incorporate planes of colour to complement the line
compositions and provide depth, while her more recent works, such as Checks
and Balances, feature collage techniques and a greater focus on blurring
the line between drawing and the sculptural object.
Rachel Harrison
Rachel Harrison’s oeuvre challenges conventional narratives of the history of sculpture and how we experience objects as individuals in space and time. Her work forces viewers to slow down, examine it closely, develop narratives from various juxtapositions, and consider social relations in light of the artist’s assertions via the object. Harrison has been described as essentially feminist, rebuking the masculine heroicism of much contemporary and Modernist art. Using commercially available materials such as chicken wire, polystyrene, a stucco foam agent called Parex, paint, and found objects, she makes assemblages that are humorous and bold. Even photographic works, such as her 2007 frieze The Voyage of the Beagle, operate as sculpture.
Harrison’s work has been exhibited widely since the 1990s in shows at the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, and the Walker Art Center, among others, and she was included in the 2002 and 2008 Whitney Biennials.
I want people to be real with art, to be
conscious and present with the object in order to experience it. Sometimes when
I am looking at a painting I might space out and start thinking about something
entirely unrelated. When the painting wakes me back up I see more of what’s
there before me, and it puts me back into the present. This kind of experience
is becoming increasingly important to me as these other aspects of
virtualization, marketing, and branding explode. Maybe I’m starting to think
that artworks need to unfold slowly over time in real space to contest the
instantaneous distribution and circulation of images with which we’ve become so
familiar.
JUDY PFAFF.
"I think of the things about being an artist is that you should be
allowed to test murky, unclear, unsure territory or all you have left are
substitutes that signify these positions. Having it all together is the least
interesting thing in art, in being alive."
Biography
Judy Pfaff is known for working in large
scale, creating exuberant site-specific installations that incorporate diverse
materials like wire, string, lights, plastic tubing, sheets of metal, and
fabric. In the 1970s, when other artists were creating serial Minimalist work, Pfaff, along with like-minded artists Gordon Matta-Clark,
Lynda Benglis, and
Richard Tuttle,
made gutsy, chaotic installations full of colour and life. According to Pfaff,
installation projects allow her “to plunge into that spacey void and edit the
chaos into a dramatic and sensual environment.”
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