Joyce Kozloff: How We Know What We Know

Joyce Kozloff came to the Arts/Industry program in 1986, with the express purpose of producing ceramic tiles for a commission at Detroit’s Financial Center People Mover Station. Prior to that, she had been executing commissions such as these in her home studio. As an Arts/Industry resident, she had access to the Kohler Co. materials and production facilities to create the components for this installation working in a studio on the factory floor.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Kozloff and other artists became committed to a serious investigation of ornamentation. The resultant group, now known as the Pattern and Decoration Movement (or P&D) looked to decorative traditions across the world, such as textiles and embroideries, wallpapers, illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, glassware, and architectural embellishments. This embrace of what was traditionally considered “inessential” was directly oppositional to the masculine and sexist world of modern art.

In the 1990s, Kozloff turned to cartography, in a myriad of forms. Across paintings, frescoes, installations, and sculpture, Kozloff uses maps to reveal the limits and possibilities of knowledge production and the varied relationships that govern systems of power.

As part of the Arts Center’s celebration of Arts/Industry’s fiftieth anniversary, the museum’s galleries in the historic John Michael Kohler home will be dedicated to solo presentations of work by two of the residency program’s alumnae. Through these exhibitions, the Arts Center will re-engage with the artists and their evolving practices. The ways in which Arts/Industry afforded the residents career opportunities and expanded their thinking about unfamiliar materials will be spotlighted. The artists will also share their lasting impressions of the program.

Joyce Kozloff: How We Know What We Know considers a twenty-year span of Kozloff’s career, beginning with her Arts/Industry residency. Through a presentation of work from five of her series (among them are Voyages, Knowledge, and Targets) from 1986–2006, it traces her transition into cartography. The exhibition also features a sound composition by Carolyn Yarnell.

Image: Joyce Kozloff, Targets, 2000; acrylic on canvas with wood frame; 108 in. diameter. Courtesy of the artist and DC Moore Gallery, New York. Photo: John and Anne Abbott.