WRITING : 2004 : GEORGE STOLL

George Stoll

Angles Gallery

In a previous life, George Stoll worked as an art director on off-Hollywood gross-outs such as The Stuff, thus honing his knack for immaculate facture and his sense of showmanship. As an artist, Stoll is known for his perfect reproductions of familiar objects, such as sponges carved from balsa wood and colored beeswax molded into Tupperware sets. In a funny, festive show titled "Thinking of Christmas," he presents garlands (two half-circles and one tweaked line), two piles of snowballs, and a suite of organza works suggesting strings of soft-focus Christmas lights. Stoll's untitled simulacra are friendly ghosts, owing more to Martha Stewart than Jean Baudrillard. (And yes, that's a good thing.) The garlands are fastidious homemade renditions of the store-bought version, whereas the perfectly imperfect snowballs (ingredients: Styrofoam, cheesecloth, plaster, spackle, and gesso) are, well, true imitations. Stacked neatly on matching white pedestals, the snowball piles wink at Modernist notions of purity by simultaneously recalling repetitive Minimalist geometry and David Hammons's Bliz-aard Ball Sale. The elegantly sewn and appliquéd organza works also relate to Modernism, more reverently recalling the colored circle paintings of Sonia Delauney or Frantisek Kupka. But the play of light through the translucent material, mounted in shallow boxes, unexpectedly evokes the sleight of hand in Robert Irwin's scrim installations. Rather than hinge his works' reception on some tired opposition of art and craft, Stoll uses both to reinvent the familiar, and puts on a good show in the process. 'Tis the season.

Artforum.com, December 23, 2004

WRITING : 2004 : GEORGE STOLL