Gelah Penn
Sele #8 (2019)
Gelah Penn’s work expands the language of drawing in sculptural space. Recent solo exhibitions include: Undercurrent (Brooklyn, NY); Baker Center for the Arts/Muhlenberg College (Allentown, PA); Amelie A. Wallace Gallery/SUNY Old Westbury (Old Westbury, NY); and ICEHOUSE Project Space (Sharon, CT). Recent group exhibitions include: Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Boulder, CO); Center for Maine Contemporary Art (Rockland, ME); Felician University (Rutherford, NJ); Equity Gallery, Odetta, Kentler International Drawing Space and The Yard (New York, NY). Her work is in the collections of the Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, NC), Arkansas Arts Center, (Little Rock, AR), Columbus Museum (Columbus, GA), Brooklyn Museum Library (Brooklyn, NY) and Gund Library/Cleveland Institute of Art (Cleveland, OH). Reviews of her work have been published in Art in America, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, d'Art International, Whitehot Magazine and artcritical; and her work was featured in Sculpture Magazine. Penn has received a Tree of Life Individual Artist Grant and residencies from the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, Yaddo and MacDowell. After many years in NYC, the artist now lives and works in rural Connecticut.
Statement:
In my site-responsive installations and mixed-media wall constructions, I assemble experiences of visual ambiguity. By cutting, layering, tearing, stapling and stretching synthetic materials, I foreground internal conceptual and formal dualities: substance and immateriality, cohesion and fragmentation, object and image. Using my arsenal of optical plastics, polyester mesh, Mylar and plastic garbage bags, my aim is to choreograph events of perceptual incident. My hope is that this conflation of disparate parts — mark, shadow, geometry, gesture, concord, dissonance — results in some sort of vertiginous whole. My interest in film, particularly the uneasy territory of film noir, and fiction informs the work.
The crux of my installation process is a balancing act between advance preparation and on-site decision-making. As I have no sense of direction, I think this strategy gives me a greater understanding of my place in space. Many of my installations are ephemeral, and once dismantled, I often use elements from them to generate individual, multi-component constructions. In a kind of reverse cross-pollination, I may also reformulate and recombine such works into subsequent installations.
EDUCATION
1973 BFA, San Francisco Art Institute
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2020 Uneasy Terms, Undercurrent, Brooklyn, NY
2019 WHITEOUT, ICEHOUSE Project Space, Sharon, CT
Ebb Tide, Odetta/Chelsea, New York, NY2017 High Tide, Baker Center for the Arts, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA (catalogue)
Situations and Polyglots, Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury, Long Island, NY (catalogue)2015 Polyglot Y Unhinged, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, Open Window Project, New York, NY
Double Indemnity & Polyglots, Foley Gallery, New York, NY2010 Shadow of a Doubt, Carl Berg Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2009 Clash by Night, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT
2008 The Narrow Margin, Rowan University Art Gallery, Glassboro, NJ
2006 Detour, Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY
Swing Time, Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, Project Room, Brooklyn, NY2005 On Dangerous Ground, Realform Project Space, Brooklyn, NY
2001 Gelah Penn: New Work, 354 Exhibitions, Brooklyn, NY
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, New York, NY
The Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA
Brooklyn Museum Library, Brooklyn, NY
Cleveland Institute of Art, Gund Library, Cleveland, OH
Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, NY
Fox Rothschild, LLP, Philadelphia, PA
NV/da Architects, New York, NY
O’Neill McVoy Architects, New York, NY
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021 Here and There, Cove Street Arts, Portland, ME, curated by David Row
The Stubborn Influence of Painting, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO, curated by Kate Petley
The Idiosyncratic Pencil ReDrafted, Harper Gallery, Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC2020 XS, Alfa Gallery, Miami, FL
Social Photography VIII, Carriage Trade, New York, NY
Art Off-Screen, Neumeraki, international online exhibition, curated by Eileen Jeng
USPS Art Project, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT
Booth 07 Online Viewing Rooms, Alfa Gallery, Miami, FL2019 Liz Atz and Gelah Penn: SPLICE, The Yard, New York, NY, curated by Eileen Jeng
Thisness and Whatness, Felician University, Rutherford, NJ, curated by Scott Reeds
Inversions: Contemporary Art Influenced by the Architecture of Louis Kahn, Gallery RIVAA, Roosevelt Island, New York, NY, curated by Melinda Wang
The Idiosyncratic Pencil Resharpened, Harper Gallery, Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC2018 Beyond Black & White, Westbeth Gallery, New York, NY
Flat???, Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY, curated by William Stover
Onyx, Alfa Gallery, Miami, FL
Consciousness, Alfa Gallery, Miami, FL
Material, Alfa Gallery, Miami, FL
The Idiosyncratic Pencil, Elisabeth Stone Harper Gallery, Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC2017 Materiality: The Matter of Matter, CMCA, Rockland, ME, curated by Bethany Engstrom
2017:1947, Equity Gallery, New York, NY
Give Voice, LMAK Projects, New York, NY
Noir: Defining the Melodrama, Longwood Arts Project, Bronx Council on the Arts, Bronx, NY2016 SFAI Alumni Exhibition, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA, curated by Katya Min
Selections from the Collection, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC
PLACE: Dawn Clements, Cynthia Lin, Gelah Penn, Fran Siegel, Equity Gallery, New York, NY
Sideshow Nation IV: Thru the Rabbit Hole, Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY2015 Volume 2, Schema Projects, Brooklyn, NY
Diphthong, Shirley Fiterman Art Center, New York, NY
Seeing Sound: Jane Harris, Alex Paik, Gelah Penn, Odetta Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Sideshow Nation III: Circle the Wagons, Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Paperazzi 4, Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, Brooklyn, NY