Outcropping
Erica Stoller

GALLERY I

Erica Stoller, Outcropping (detail), 2024, Corrugated cardboard, paper, twine, dimensions variable.

October 12 – November 10, 2024

Opening reception: Saturday, October 12, from 6–8pm

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce Outcropping, an exhibition of cardboard wall sculptures by New York Artist Erica Stoller, and her fourth at the gallery. As in Stoller’s previous installations, common materials are used in unexpected ways.

Outcropping extends Stoller’s interest in repurposing industrial materials to create site-specific installations, allowing the nature of the material to determine the configuration of the works. Earlier exhibitions have incorporated plastic plumbing tubes, foam insulation, parachute cord, bead chain, and swimming noodles. With Outcropping, Stoller turns her attention to one of the most common materials in our daily lives: rescued and repurposed corrugated cardboard, which proves to be a varied, adaptable, and useful substance. Cardboard pieces of various sizes and sources are sliced, bent, and glued to create a surprising variety of textures, shapes, and shadows. Mounted on the wall, the individual pieces transform into a single contiguous installation.

The cardboard itself, in its most basic substance, is the primary subject matter of the show. And yet the layered configuration of the pieces also recalls rock formations and geological strata. The horizontality of the elements, the push and pull in not-so-low relief, speaks to the shape of the Laurentide glacier that formed the northeastern United States and the rocky, craggy land it left after it melted. 

Stoller’s installation is similarly monumental, yet temporary. On the afternoon of Sunday, November 10, the final day of the exhibition, pieces from the installation will be offered to visitors. Whatever elements remain will be taken apart, flattened, and bundled for recycling. 

Erica Stoller lives outside of New York City and has been affiliated with A.I.R Gallery for more than ten years. She graduated from Bennington College, worked at the Brooklyn Museum and for Ileana Sonnabend in Paris, and for many years was involved with photography and architecture as the director of Esto.

View the Press Release here.

View Erica Stoller’s page here.

Photography: Matthew Sherman