Research

  • Office Architecture and Invisible Bodies
  • GRANTEE
    Jessica Vaughn
    GRANT YEAR
    2019

Jessica Vaughn, “Depreciating Assets: Variable Dimensions” (detail), 2018. Metal, lacquer paint, and hardware, dimensions variable. Exhibition view of the artist’s solo exhibition, “Exit Strategy” at Emalin Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist and Martos Gallery.

Office Architecture and Invisible Bodies explores the slippage and messiness of how material and physical structures can and do shape our reading of space, compliance and architecture. Her research into how office cubicles are fabricated and designed is the groundwork for the creation of new sculptures for forthcoming exhibitions. Vaughn's focuses her research in the 1980's–90's when American city government and economic sectors redeveloped the architecture in city centers, and workspaces into neoliberal sites for newly automated clerical work and policy that through compliance included workers of color. Vaughn combines materials linked to bureaucratic and civic compliance with postmodernist architecture to investigate our engagement with space and objects.

Jessica Vaughn received a BHA from Carnegie Mellon University and a MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. She was a participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program. Selected solo and group exhibitions include: A solo exhibition at Dallas Contemporary (forthcoming); Post Institutional Stress Disorder, Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus, DK (2018); Exit Strategy, Emalin Gallery, London, UK (2018); FRONT International, Cleveland and Akron, OH (2018); Omnipresence, The Kitchen, New York, NY (2018); Receipt of a Form, Martos Gallery, New York, NY (2017); Material Deviance, Sculpture Center, New York, NY (2017); Round 39: Looking Back, Moving Forward, Project Row Houses, Houston, TX (2013); Fore, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY (2013).