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 No. 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, from which this exhibition and catalogue take their name, uses the gallery wall as a screen kissed by various objects in what the artist calls "an emotionally charged event." This work, in which found objects become actors in the drama of space and color, is exemplary of the many objects gathered together for this retrospective look at Stockholder's self-contained assemblages since 1988. Includes an interview with the artist, scholarly essays, an annotated chronology and a detailed exhibition and publication history.