Finding beauty in complexity and contradiction.
Jessica Stockholder was born in Seattle in 1959 and currently lives and works in Nanaimo. Her extensive practice arises in relationship to the excessive expendability of physical materials within capitalist society.
Jessica’s work incorporates readily available materials, such as building supplies, plastic bags and containers, faux and real fur, furniture and electronics that are repurposed into assemblages that complicate the boundary between sculpture and painting.
Working with paint and the colour of her materials, she creates a coherent experience that is at once dependent on, and floats free of, the objects from which the works are made.
Her work finds beauty in complexity and contradiction, points to the intermingling of our invented world with the natural, and reflects back to us the fascinating detritus of contemporary life.
For over thirty years, Jessica Stockholder has exhibited widely in museums and galleries internationally. Her recent solo exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2025); Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern, Palma (2025); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2024); Frac Normandie, Sotteville-lès-Rouen (2023); Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago (2021); 1301PE, Los Angeles (2020); The Contemporary Austin (2018); Galerie nächst St. Stephan, Vienna (2016); Smart Museum, Chicago (2015); and Frac des Pays de la Loire, Nantes (2012).
Recent group exhibitions include Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz (2025); Musée d’art modern et contemporain, Saint-Étienne (2022); SFMoMA, San Francisco (2022); Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin (2021); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2021); Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2019); Musee d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux (2017); and The National Academy Museum, New York (2016).
Her work is represented in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; MoCA LA; SF MoMA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The British Museum, London; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
The Twilight Talks are co-presented by Painting and Photography, in the Audain Faculty of Art.