DEB SOKOLOW

archive of possibilities

Curated by Kristin Korolowicz

MAY 1–26 2017

In December of 2016, The Stolbun Collection founder Seth Stolbun invited me to propose a curatorial project in response to Joseph Grigely’s stewardship of the Hans Ulrich Obrist archive at The School of the Art Institute Chicago. After discovering fertile connections between these archival projects and the text-driven, research-based work of Deb Sokolow, I asked the artist to work together on a contribution to arcade-archive. We will begin building the archive consisting of her realized, unrealized, incomplete and perhaps future projects on the evening of May Day 2017.
 
Deb Sokolow’s text-and-image drawings are initially derived from a stage of laborious research focused on the lesser-known, usually comical and revealing, facts about the lives of influential individuals. For example, in past projects she has focused on the mind control tactics of cult leader Jim Jones, and prolific architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s alleged difficulties with secretaries. Her works on paper formally recall storyboards that incorporate material studies, meticulous architectural sketches, diagrams, portrait drawings and the strong presence of the artist’s hand-written block text. On Sokolow's pieces, the labor of editing, erasing and reworking the narrative is visible to the reader-viewer. She writes on the collages of images and drawings, as well as within the margins. Since there are constant interjections and shifts in tone within the writing, the reader-viewer can never be too certain that it’s the artist’s voice driving the story. This tactic blurs fact and fiction to the degree that neither is discernible. 
 
Often presented as interconnected drawings, Sokolow's installations recall cinematic conventions found in many psychological thrillers: the discovery of the antagonist’s secret hideout, a room containing mysterious fragments of information connecting relationships between people, places and events to reveal the meta-narrative. In a deliberate nod to Obrist’s archives of unrealized projects, or what he likes to call “unbuilt roads,” Deb Sokolow’s archive of possibilities will include items that have been occupying the artist’s studio and have either played a role in the making of her work, have been edited out, or are unfinished, such as:
 
–  printouts of typed texts, with and without handwritten annotations
–  printouts of images and articles and any other source material
–  handwritten research notes
–  tracings
–  material explorations
–  preliminary sketches
–  small unfinished drawings
–  parts of abandoned projects
 
Here at The Stolbun Collection, Sokolow’s future parafictions are gathered, classified and given new potential lives in her archive. Beginning on May Day, we invite you to watch the labor of the taxonomic act live from the nest security cameras of The Stolbun Collection below. From May 6th through the 26th, The Stolbun Collection will be open by appointment only. Please contact us at debsokolowsworkarchives@gmail.com to book a guided tour of the project.
 
—Kristin Korolowicz, Curator
 

Deb Sokolow is an artist and writer. Her work has been included in the 4th Athens Biennale in Greece and in other group exhibitions at the Drawing Center in New York, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen in Germany, Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Solo exhibitions include the Abrons Art Center in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut.
 
Sokolow’s drawings have been reproduced for Creative Time’s Comics project, for Swedish art magazine, Paletten, and in Vitamin D2, a survey on contemporary drawing. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, the Thomas J Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. Sokolow is a recipient of an Artadia award and residencies at Art Omi and Nordic Artists’ Centre in Norway. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. Sokolow is currently working on a commissioned project for the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA.
 
Kristin Korolowicz is an independent curator. She has worked previously at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Bass Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. As the Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellow at the MCA Chicago, she co-curated Theaster Gates’s “13th Ballad,” an extension of his multifaceted project for dOCUMENTA (13), with chief curator Michael Darling. Korolowicz also curated solo exhibitions of commissioned works by Gaylen Gerber and José Lerma. Her current independent curatorial research interests include investigating multivalent forms of collaboration. Over the course of her career, she has worked with an array of emerging to established artists, such as: Ghada Amer & Reza Farkhondeh, Roman Ondák, Mark Dion, Felipe Mujica & Johanna Unzueta, Laurent Grasso, Sanford Biggers, Glenn Kaino, Victoria Martinez, Chemi Rosado-Seijo, and Jillian Mayer, among others. She earned her MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts.