Jessica Stockholder has unveiled new work at several Chicago locations this fall, including a site-specific installation at the Smart Museum of Art as well as in her solo exhibition “Door Hinges” and the group show “Assisted,” which she curated, both in Kavi Gupta’s Elizabeth Street location. “Door Hinges” continues Stockholder’s characteristic experimentation with color and abstraction as tools to disrupt and transform architectural space: A catwalk snakes through the main room beside Wall Hardware, 2015, a temporary wall-cum-canvas fixed with enlarged calligraphic pen marks near the stool and mirror installation In Many Places, 2014. Here, Stockholder also debuts Assist 1–3, 2015, three fabricated metal sculptures strapped to large auxiliary objects with vinyl belts. These top-heavy forms behave in turns as primary sculptures—relying on a piano, a vintage desk, and a Smart electric car for support—and as pedestals supporting other artworks (including a Tony Tasset sculpture).

On the second floor, “Assisted” further examines support networks via sixteen artists who influence Stockholder’s practice. A few of Stockholder’s works appear here as well, as does a street lamp (its base appears on the first floor, and it rises to the second floor to hang over a ceramic bathtub). What emerges from these combined rooms is a profound conversation between objects and aesthetic experiments, highlighting the dynamic, polyvocal network in which individual efforts congeal.

— Caroline Picard