Initialed JH and dated
Property from the Claudia R. Luebbers Trust, Chicago, Illinois
Provenance: Tough, Chicago
acquired from the above 1996
1994 Hamza Walker, “All That Gravity Will Allow, or Ode to Joy Revisited,” catalog essay for Frozen Turkey Dinners
1996 Janet Cavallero, “Frozen Turkey Dinners” (review), New Art Examiner, Jan., pp. 37–38 (photo)

Jo Hormuth’s work swings between the coolly elegant and the flat out funny, enlisting a diversity of means and media while employing simple conceptual strategies to decidedly poetic ends. Individual works range from video and photography to sculpture and installation.

Much of her work involves the transformation and/or re-contextualization of a familiar thing (i.e.: a skirt, a baseball, a pansy). This “shift” has the potential to unlock meaning latent within the object. She transforms “the familiar” to create situations that become springboards for the viewer to consider many relationships, contradictions and possibilities. Concepts of repetition, similarity and difference are directly engaged as well as scale changes, unlikely materials, use and context. Humor is embraced, and she believes, as Man Ray did, that it is the best communicator. Formalism is undermined by subjective content and apparent contradictions abound in the work in terms of materials or presentation. Jo aims to work the gap where everyday life and culture overlap.