Stochmal juxtaposes the bricks' recognizable sturdiness with the temporality of organic inclusions. Querying normative notions of “home”, the bricks are arranged in a quasi-architectural installation. Both a monument and a refuge, (a place to rest our bodies) commemorates a queer coming of age and constructs a sanctuary for a plethora of bodies and kinships. Interspecies mingling and unorthodox intercourses skirt the perimeters of hetero and gender normative body logics. What contrast to those affective spaces, the nuclear family, the heteronormative home, which constitute the suburban landscape and its prescriptive lifestyle.
Abnormal constituents—bacteria and mold inoculated by the artist—fester upon piles of old clothing. Bacterial inclusions are markers of much of Stochmal’s work, and here they cultivate an ecosystem of bodily microbes back into the work. Stochmal’s hydrosol scents in (from somewhere within) featuring two glass reagent bottles, invites viewers to waft the distilled aromas of decaying leaf litter and love letters, evoking place-specific memory through scent. Stochmal’s musty petrichors reference the sensuality of perfume while eliciting the sensorial landscape of a forest. Leaf detritus touches and becomes soil, microbes proliferate in decay, and organic matter moves between the living and the dead. Conceptually and literally unearthing hidden sites of intimacy, (bodies swallowed but not digested) probes the liminal thresholds between life, death, and contamination.
Curatorial Statement written by Levi DeCoste
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In conjunction with his exhibition, Patrick Stochmal led a workshop titled Making a Memory Brick. Using the processes employed to make his work (a place to rest our bodies), Stochmal led participants in incorporating items of meaning into their own bricks made out of foraged clay.