SOPHIE STONE:
CHARM PACK
APRIL 18 - JUNE 1

I like to hear the word sisal spoken aloud. It has a sturdy, scruffy sensuality. Not unlike the rope of its product, a material that can do many things.
The works in this exhibition engage fully with the business of thinking-through-making; with the question of “wholeness,” as the artist has come to define it. To some measure, these works appear to be stalled somewhere along the process of redefining themselves. They're finished edges having been cut, collaged, and extended. The confidence of these gestures can be unnerving, but lend insight into Stone’s unusual attitude towards preciousness.
In the case of Pink Pollen, a floral textile is planted squarely in the center like a plotted garden. Its crocheted perimeter takes on the texture of piled dirt, while beaded forms re insert themselves: interrupting but also heightening the dizziness, the shifting scale of the floral pattern. Every one of Stone's processes is a means of revision, though not necessarily away from the object of origin. Instead I find myself led to consider why these objects (often woven or sewn) were chosen in the first place. Their fragility and labor? Their familiarity or ontology?
It’s as if these objects have cycled through various interior trends, surviving the years by means of mutation. Her works are feral placemats in this way. Take Charm Pack for example, who’s substructure of woven metal is vaguely familiar. Gleaned from the wall of an elevator? How did this material come to stand for anonymous luxury? Similar to the sisal in the floor works, we have expectations for where and how these materials make sense.
Echoing the strategies contained in the works themselves, the logic of the room comes into play. The works edit the room, removing a window, say, or hovering like a hallucinated doorway.

Text by Jessi Reaves.