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Artist Statement

Early in the generation of my work, I became interested in what I referred to as “the space between people.” Not only the miles or inches that separate us, but everything that the phrase might imply — space as distance and space as time, living space and the space between words.  

My formative experiences were often experiences of absence and silence. Throughout my work I have attempted to make something that embodies that lack of communication and reworks it as worthwhile, as beautiful, as worthy of examination, as meaningful.

I have often used silence as a subject, and more recently I have been engaged by the idea of a silence chosen. I am particularly drawn to instances of silence within the domestic arena and to the boundaries that limit how much can be understood. I have my own ambivalence about the need to tell and the desire to remain unknown. Stemming from this ambivalence is an interest in combining sentimental ideas with systematic approaches — the first being a shorthand that announces feelings while discouraging further examination and the second an (ac)counting concerned with summing up, reducing drama to its most concise form, a bottom line and in some way a kind of memorial.

The source materials in my work have always been a key to my intentions. I have used worn household linens, television schedules, camping supply catalogs, and the daily newspaper. All have to do with domestic space or the establishment of it. Many of these materials carry sentimental associations. My approach to each source varies and has been somewhat less than sentimental. I am interested in using the geometry, grids, and systematic approaches of modern, minimal, and conceptual art, in part to show how they do and do not relate to more popular and sentimental expression. This combination of sources and systems involves questions about the symbolic economy of love and affection, as well as the collision of overt sentimentality and high modernist ideal, while evoking loss, elements of time, and the process of handiwork.

Artist Bio

Stephen Sollins is a contemporary artist with a longstanding interest in the visual rhythms of time and the possibilities of silence as subjects for art. He holds Fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts and The MacDowell Colony. 

Sollins's work has been exhibited in the permanent galleries of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and at the American Folk Art Museum.  

He has had solo exhibitions at Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, California, Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, and at galleries including Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York; Pavel Zoubok, New York; Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco; and Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans. 

He has taken part in numerous group shows at museums and galleries including Bronx Museum of the Arts; The Drawing Center; Weatherspoon Art Museum; the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor; and the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.

In addition, his work is part of many public and private collections including The Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art; The Achenbach Foundation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Portland Art Museum; and The Davis Museum at Wellesley College.

Stephen Sollins received his MFA from School of Visual Arts in 1997 and his BA in Photography from Bard College in 1990.  

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