MATERIAL MEMORY
Jessica Gaynelle Moss
Stephen Wilson is a multidisciplinary artist whose early career in the commercial fashion industry
scaffolded his software company and ultimately his fine art practice. Read anything about Wilson
or his work, and you’re bound to come across some denotation of the intersection of ‘high and
low’, but beyond discussions of high and low, beyond art and craft1, beyond the exhaustive list of
comparisons to white men that are often praised in Western fashion and art history2, and beyond
the challenge of overcoming comparisons and defining one’s own legacy, is a persistent artist
with a unique set of tools and a very clear vision.
Wilson’s most recent body of work, Luxury Graffiti brings a familiar exterior landscape – bricks,
walls, billboard-sized pieces, skateboards – into an indoor gallery-like setting. Directly influenced
by the street art, hip hop music and culture coming out of New York city during his youth, this
exhibition is a multi-layered expression of capitalism, consumption and commercialization focused
on a processed-based examination of materiality. Curator Jennifer Sudul Edwards, Ph.D. wrote
in a 20163 essay ‘The ‘American’ in Stephen Wilson’s Americana’, “The city streets are never too
far from Wilson’s work, no matter how supple the silk or ornate the embroidery stitch. It is hard
for me to look at ‘Americana’ and not remember the New York City of the 1980s where Wilson
and I both ran amok, with its coded graffiti tags and a matrix of posters ranging from concert
advertisements to record covers to art openings to political outrage.”
Now, Wilson’s process-driven practice is guided by the touch of both the human and the
machine. Wilson utilizes an embroidery design software program that translates his nuanced
marks into stitches. Just like a graffiti artist, building up a surface, by situating pieces on top of each
other, stitch by stitch, layer by layer, Wilson is able to create new environments, backgrounds, or
even frameworks upon which to construct the rest of the work. Ultimately, an object is produced
that neither the artist nor the machine could accomplish independently of the other.
Wilson says, “I started in the creative industry right after high school, making screen printed shirts
and posters for local bands on the Jersey Shore.” His early experience with mass communications
and software only further propelled his evolution as an artist. Through Stephen Wilson, we learn
autonomy, optimizing what you’ve got access to, the power of honing a unique communication
device, and the strength required to trust in your own ‘Material Memories’.
1 Art Critic Eleanor Heartney has extensively written about Wilson, his studio process and practice blurring the lines
between art and craft. “He works in series, allowing each body of work to explore an idea in depth.”
2 Hirst, Hermes, Warhol, Versace, Koons, Cucinelli, Haring, Jacobs, Raschenberg, Lauren, Hockney.
3 Stephen Wilson Studio, Americana, 2016.
JESSICA GAYNELLE MOSS IS AN
ARTIST, WRITER AND FOUNDER
OF THE ROLL UP, A RESIDENCY
PROGRAM AND NATIONAL
NETWORK OF ART INCUBATORS.