Esther Stocker — À propos — Slash Paris

Born in Schlanders, Italy in 1974, Esther Stocker has studied at the Fine Art Academies of Vienna and Brera-Milan, as well as at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She regularly exhibits in museums and art centres throughout Europe (Germany, Italy, France,..) and the US. Among others her work has been shown at the South London Gallery (“Beyond these Walls”) in 2009, at CCNOA of Brussels (“Abstract Thought is a warm puppy”) and at the Museum of Modern Art of the Ludwig foundation in Vienna (“geometrisch betrachtet”) in 2008, at the Galerie im Taxispalast of Innsbruck in 2006 and at AR/GE Kunstgalerie Museum of Bolzano in 2004. In 2011 Esther Stocker presented her solo show “Destino Comune” at MACRO in Rome, she also took part in the exhibitions “Fünf Räume” of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York and “Abstraction/Quotidien” and “Abstraction/Modernité” of CAC Passerelle in Brest.

Esther Stocker’s work principally consists of paintings and installations in an abstract and geometrical perspective, the two genres being closely related to each other. The artist´s installations are three dimensional projections of her paintings, exclusively made with a limited palette of black, grey and white. Could they be described as spatial, sculptural paintings or rather as pictorial spaces? Esther Stocker breaks the genres of art.

As an heir to historical art movements such as Geometric abstraction, Gruppo T and 1960s’ Op art, Esther Stocker continues the research in vision and perception of space in a social and contemporary approach, also being influenced by new technologies. The creation of her pieces is inseparably connected to a highly elaborated mathematical discourse, an essential part of her artistic method. The artist´s reflexion is focused on the question: " How is a perfect system imperfect in reality? " Her geometric structures are based upon eternally self-repeating modules that create a seemingly ordered visual rhythm, to which the artist adds aberrations in order to generate an adjacent but new rhythm. This introduction of deviation in the optical balance, similar to the 16th century’s mannerist architectural approach, creates surprise and emotion through the purposeful disruption of order and plane dimension.

According to these points, the artist created works and installations for the several Group Shows she took part in: among the others, in 2013, GEO-NEO-POST, Vasarely Museum, Budapest, Hungary; Farbe Raum Farbe, Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin Germany. She recently presented solo Shows on renowned museums and institutions such as Destino Comune at MACRO, Roma, Italy in 2011, Portrait of Disorder, Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch, Germany in 2012.