Kirsten Stoltmann
Issue #25
The L.A. multimedia artist shifts her focus from self-portraits to 'monkey mode'
By Amber Drea
Published: September 1st, 2005 | 4:00pm
A woman and a man, both nude, crawl toward each other, meet behind a pedestal, engage in intercourse, and continue on their way. The act is at once sensual and sterile, tender and animalistic, like watching insects mating on a nature program.
This video piece, titled Behind the Pedestal, is the first in a three-part series created by Kirsten Stoltmann and her husband, Sterling Ruby. Couples followed, depicting the reciprocity of the romantic relationship, and last May, L.A.’s Sister Gallery exhibited the third installment. In Adjoining the Voids, Ruby digs a large hole, which represents Stoltmann’s grave, then eats a banana, and after he wanders away, Stoltmann defecates in the hole. When he returns, Ruby slips on his banana peel and falls into the grave, landing in the feces.
A powerful yet humorous work about the dueling careers of married artists, the collaboration is a perfect blend of their individual styles. “Sterling has a real work ethic as an artist and all his work is labor-intensive, and my work is more about gesture and revealing vulnerability or immaturity reactionary,” Stoltmann says. “Basically I’m shitting on his work.”
Stoltmann’s art is narrative, concept-driven, and self-analytic, and she’s often the subject of her work, which deals with exposing emotion in everyday life. But she didn’t start out that way. After years of studying experimental film and doing volunteer video work, a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, urged her into studio art. Not having a clue what to do with a studio, the Milwaukee native built a skateboarding ramp in the space and allowed 13-year-old boys to use it for a year. Boys and Flowers, a video of boys skating interspersed with images of flowers and set to music by Joan of Arc, marked her first foray into making objects. “It was really a sculpture manifested in a video,” she says. “So that’s what ruined my life.”
Since then, Stoltmann’s work has been shown in exhibitions and festivals all over the world. Though she’s recently moved away from video and self-portraits, Stoltmann feels she’ll come back to both. “I’ve always been dealing with the vulnerability of persona. I do feel like it is something I’ll stick to,” she says. “I just haven’t felt the inspiration to do something moving in time. But video is in the blood, and I know I can do it.”
Stoltmann’s next solo show takes place at New York’s Wallspace, when its new space opens in January. In the meantime, she is working with sculpture, photographs, and etched glass in preparation for a possible group show to be curated by friends. "I’ve been in this monkey mode," she says. "When you have kids, you go back. It feels really primitive. Children are like little monkeys."
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