Untitled 1994

Jessica Stockholder made this untitled sculpture, and I can only imagine the process of building it. The way the paint is applied on the wooden structure makes me think of her decisions, like a chess game, with a sense of trial and error. I can almost feel Stockholder's intuition guiding her; she experiments, responds, and shifts, and the sculpture emerges. It's a vibrant explosion of color, a visual feast of yellows, purples, reds, and oranges, a testament to how color can change everything. Look how the black cables droop like melting licorice above the composition. Painting, for Stockholder, and for many of us, is an embodied experience, where ambiguity reigns and fixed meanings take a back seat. I imagine her in conversation with other painters, exchanging ideas, and sparking one another’s creativity across time.