Super Synthetic: Jodi Stuart

Jodi Stuart creates a riot of color and texture in her latest site-conscious installation that pairs craft traditions such as weaving, knitting, and basketmaking with abstracted, virtual space. Made from ABS plastic filaments intended for digital printing, Stuart uses a 3D pen to meticulously ‘draw’ the large-scale works on view. Unlike the precise, automated process of 3D printing the pen brings to light Stuart’s gestural, celebratory mark-making. As the artist applies layers of material she also reinserts the body or “hand” in a mechanically dominated world. 

The result is a wildly futuristic ‘playground’ that attracts and repels the viewer’s urge to touch, swing, and climb. While materials such as chain and handlebars reference the classical elements of a recreational space, Stuart’s imagination runs free in areas like the ‘Hell-mouth’ swing and squishy, foam-based archways. Collectively, Super Synthetic is a physical and sensory experience that teeters the line between a functional and futuristic jungle gym.

Stuart's work explores the look of digital technologies that saturate our everyday lives, in relation to tactile and sensory experiences. The artist's practices deeply interested in the desire to re-insert the body into virtual experience - and/or - to materialize physical objects from the virtual. Stuart's sculptural forms are made using the plastic filaments intended for 3D digital printing. By using a '3D pen', Stuart has replaced the computer with the human hand in a kind of nostalgic, futile but beautiful, gesture. Through this combination of materials and forms, Stuart creates an uneasy optical space where craft traditions such as weaving, knitting, and basketmaking are juxtaposed with abstracted virtual space, that hints at neutral networks, cloud computing, information, and bio-systems.

Jodi Stuart was born in 1971 and grew up in a small farming town on the East Coast of New Zealand. She attained a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland in 1999, and an MFA from Auckland University in 2001. Jodi moved to the United States with her family in 2010 and currently lives in Denver where she has recently completed a two year artist residency at RedLine Contemporary Art Center. Stuart has exhibited in her home country of New Zealand, California, Colorado, Michigan, Maryland, Texas, and Washington.

Stuart's work explores the look of digital technologies that saturate our everyday lives, in relation to tactle and sensory experiences. The artist's practiceis deeply interested in the desire to re-insert the body into virtual experience - and/or - to materialize physcial objects from the virtual. Stuart's sculptural forms are made using the plastic filaments intended for 3D digital printing. By using a '3D pen', Stuart has replaced the computer with the human hand in a kind of nostologic, futile but beautiful, gesture. Throught this combination of materials and forms, Stuart creates an uneasy optical space where craft traditions such as weaving, knitting, and basketmaking are juxtaposted with abstracted virtual space, that hints at neutal networks, cloud computing, information, and bio-systems. 

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