With the eye of a painter, Chicago-based artist Jessica Stockholder is attentive to how color, form, and abstraction embedded in everyday objects are affective and meaningful. Prefabricated street lamps, grating, and bollards work together to create geometric form, both using volume and as a two-dimensional image. The lines between colors and the edges between materials function as drawing, shaping continuity between parts that includes negative space—such as the triangular volume of air held between the flat orange triangle on the platform and the green arms of the lamp heads above. The top of one lamp morphs into a lump of resin, divided in two by color; the line between the two colors suggests that the orange half of the shape is pushed up against a large green triangle and left dangling in the vast uncharted space outside of the sculpture. As a viewing platform, the work draws the surrounding landscape into its vortex.

“Song to mind uncouples” is a line from a poem by bpNichol (1944–1988).

Save on select landscape & outdoor lighting: Song to mind uncouples follows the 2018 exhibitions at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, Jessica Stockholder: Relational Aesthetics and Robert Davidson: U and Eye, curated by Jessica Stockholder.