Jessica Stockholder | The Globe and Mail
Artist Jessica Stockholder poses for a photo in her installation, The Squared Circle: Ringing at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto, on April 17. Courtesy Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
by Kate Taylor
Artist Jessica Stockholder has erected a bright yellow wrestling ring on the ground floor of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto. Visitors aren’t permitted to clamber up there themselves, so they will have to make do with the symbolism: It’s a platform.
Like a museum, it’s a performance space for a controlled encounter. Like the world these days, it’s a site for violent display and boastful victory. Yet it is also resolutely cheery, surrounded by walls and floors painted with large geometric shapes in orange, red and green and accompanied by a sculpture made of deconstructed standing lamps and a net of hot-pink cords.
Stockholder, who grew up in Vancouver but made her career in the United States, has taken over the entire lobby space, blurring the lines between her art and the museum’s signage and mechanical elements. Wall texts, featuring witty bits of concrete poetry, insert themselves into awkward corners; a video screen hangs alongside an air vent of a similar size.
“It’s not a white cube space. A lot of people describe it as difficult to work in,” Stockholder said in a recent interview. “There’s a front desk, there’s two entryways. […] I really had a lot of fun. I sort of welcomed everything about the space. If you are not spending your time wishing for a white cube, it’s a lovely space.”
