Esther Stocker

b. 1974, Italy

Esther Stocker is a prominent figure in the world of geometric abstract art. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, she continued her training at the Accademia di Belle Arte di Brera in Milan, followed by the Art Center College in Pasadena, California.

Since time immemorial, the creation of places has been attributed to architecture. The contribution of the painter and sculptor was simply an embellishment to highlight its character. By becoming independent, sculpture and painting broke away from architecture and shed this initial function. Translating space through geometry is not a new stylistic exercise. Without question, the cubist movement is responsible for bringing geometric shapes back to the heart of modern art and geometric abstraction became attached to an ideal of expression based on geometry. Esther Stocker has inherited this fascination with space and geometry, taking several principles from cubism, optical art and kinetic art and adding a new interest in the treatment and fragmentation of space. Her primary concern is to lay the foundations for a different conception of space, both conceptually and visually.

She works with geometric structures and grids based on repetitive modules and carries out spatial experiments. Entanglements, interconnections and permeations are employed in various ways, like a metaphorical logo that builds an environment that spans the distance separating the canvas from the three-dimensional world. Esther Stocker creates paradoxes and distortions and ambiguous art, exploring essential concepts such as modularity, space, order and repetition. The geometric environments she creates are designed to challenge perceptions.

As a result, her approach is in total contradiction to the concept of representation, since she calls into question hypotheses such as the existence of space itself. Her work demonstrates a very particular way of interacting with the environment: the confusion and ambiguity it conveys is not a desire to modify space, but an almost obsessive intention to render it invisible. She aims to eliminate it by removing any distinction between the foreground and the background and limiting the movements of the grid to a single level.

While the architect is focused on technique and creates perfect, industrial mechanisms, Esther is not content to highlight its architectural nature, as was done in the past; instead, she wants to transform the action – even if this involves introducing completely contradictory compositions – to oppose this rigour and create an illusion that aims to throw off our perception of reality through processes that resemble the trompe-l'œil effect.

Esther Stocker is a prominent figure in the world of geometric abstract art. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, she continued her training at the Accademia di Belle Arte di Brera in Milan, followed by the Art Center College in Pasadena, California.

Since time immemorial, the creation of places has been attributed to architecture. The contribution of the painter and sculptor was simply an embellishment to highlight its character. By becoming independent, sculpture and painting broke away from architecture and shed this initial function. Translating space through geometry is not a new stylistic exercise. Without question, the cubist movement is responsible for bringing geometric shapes back to the heart of modern art and geometric abstraction became attached to an ideal of expression based on geometry. Esther Stocker has inherited this fascination with space and geometry, taking several principles from cubism, optical art and kinetic art and adding a new interest in the treatment and fragmentation of space. Her primary concern is to lay the foundations for a different conception of space, both conceptually and visually.

She works with geometric structures and grids based on repetitive modules and carries out spatial experiments. Entanglements, interconnections and permeations are employed in various ways, like a metaphorical logo that builds an environment that spans the distance separating the canvas from the three-dimensional world. Esther Stocker creates paradoxes and distortions and ambiguous art, exploring essential concepts such as modularity, space, order and repetition. The geometric environments she creates are designed to challenge perceptions.

As a result, her approach is in total contradiction to the concept of representation, since she calls into question hypotheses such as the existence of space itself. Her work demonstrates a very particular way of interacting with the environment: the confusion and ambiguity it conveys is not a desire to modify space, but an almost obsessive intention to render it invisible. She aims to eliminate it by removing any distinction between the foreground and the background and limiting the movements of the grid to a single level.

While the architect is focused on technique and creates perfect, industrial mechanisms, Esther is not content to highlight its architectural nature, as was done in the past; instead, she wants to transform the action – even if this involves introducing completely contradictory compositions – to oppose this rigour and create an illusion that aims to throw off our perception of reality through processes that resemble the trompe-l'œil effect.

She works with geometric structures and grids based on repetitive modules and carries out spatial experiments. Entanglements, interconnections and permeations are employed in various ways, like a metaphorical logo that builds an environment that spans the distance separating the canvas from the three-dimensional world. Esther Stocker creates paradoxes and distortions and ambiguous art, exploring essential concepts such as modularity, space, order and repetition. The geometric environments she creates are designed to challenge perceptions.

As a result, her approach is in total contradiction to the concept of representation, since she calls into question hypotheses such as the existence of space itself. Her work demonstrates a very particular way of interacting with the environment: the confusion and ambiguity it conveys is not a desire to modify space, but an almost obsessive intention to render it invisible. She aims to eliminate it by removing any distinction between the foreground and the background and limiting the movements of the grid to a single level.

While the architect is focused on technique and creates perfect, industrial mechanisms, Esther is not content to highlight its architectural nature, as was done in the past; instead, she wants to transform the action – even if this involves introducing completely contradictory compositions – to oppose this rigour and create an illusion that aims to throw off our perception of reality through processes that resemble the trompe-l'œil effect.

— Selected works