Foley Gallery is delighted to present Double Indemnity + Polyglots, a solo show of works by artist Gelah Penn. Double Indemnity will be a site-specific installation in the front window boxes of Foley Gallery, and Polyglots will be on view inside the gallery.
Penn’s work examines the language of drawing in sculptural space. Both bodies of work embrace and subvert conventional associations of the autographic mark. In the installations, she deploys a variety of synthetic materials to invade, interpret and confound the architectural parameters of a given space. Her great interest in film, particularly the shadowy, urban territory of film noir, informs the work.
The “Polyglot” drawing series breeds internal formal and conceptual contradictions: cohesion and fragmentation, balance and vertigo, minuet and jitterbug. Areas of visual commotion impinge on the paper’s edge and transpose Penn's investigations into folded, punctured, smudged and layered zones of geometric and expressionistic gestures. In the “Polyglot Y” series, she has incorporated digital images of installation details, thus cannibalizing and reformulating her concerns from one medium to another.
Penn uses lenticular plastic, monofilament, digital prints, acrylic paint, graphite, metal staples, tape, and Yupo paper to construct a noirish interior landscape of perceptual incident and psychological dis-ease. The conflation of disparate parts—mark, shadow, geometry, gesture, concord, dissonance, method, madness—results in some sort of riotous whole.
Gelah Penn received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been extensively exhibited in many galleries including: Smack Mellon, Sculpture Center, McKenzie Fine Art, Jack Tilton Gallery, Brattleboro Museum, Museum of Arts & Crafts (Japan), Carl Berg Gallery, and Vox Populi. Her work has been reviewed in various publications, including The New York Times, Art in America, The Los Angeles Times, and The Brooklyn Rail.
Double Indemnity + Polyglots will remain on view through May 31st. Foley Gallery is open Wednesday – Sunday, 12 – 6pm. To request images, please contact the gallery at 212.244.9081 or info@foleygallery.com.