User:Empress-of-angels/sandbox2

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Gisela Colón (b.June 30, 1966) is a Canadian-born, American artist best known for meticulously creating glowing iridescent wall sculptures through a proprietary fabrication process of blow-molding acrylic. She is one of the few women working in Light and Space and Finish/Fetish movements. [1]. Her use of color, shapes and internal layering is considered "assertively feminist," [2] and "grounded in Minimalism,"[3] while her work has been compared to earlier male artists like Craig Kaufman, Dewain Valentine and Peter Alexander for her use of materials.[4]


Early life and education[edit]

Colón was born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1966 to a German mother and Puerto Rican father. She was raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico since the age of one, and attended the University of Puerto Rico, graduating magna cum laude in 1987 with a BA in Economics, after receiving a 1986 Congressional Scholarship Award by the Harry S. Truman Foundation[5] in recognition of her outstanding academic excellence. Colón moved to Los Angeles in 1987 to pursue graduate studies, receiving a Juris Doctorate degree from Southwestern University School of Law in 1990.

Early work[edit]

Colón began her career as a painter, exhibiting abstract works from 2005 through 2011. Colón’s early influences, which germinated from her Latin American upbringing in Puerto Rico, include Carlos Cruz-Diez, and Jesus Rafael Soto, amongst others. Her paintings also showed the influences of artists associated with "Light and Space" in Los Angeles such as Ron Davis and Craig Kauffman. [6] In 2012, Colón moved away from painting into sculpture, adopting a new approach and espousing a different sensibility: a focus on perceptual phenomena, an interest she shares with other members of the Los Angeles-based Light and Space movement, such as Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Craig Kauffman, DeWain Valentine, Helen Pashgian, Larry Bell, Ronald Davis, Mary Corse, and Peter Alexander. Colón’s friendship with mentor De Wain Valentine, and the writings of Donald Judd and Robert Irwin, generated a conceptual shift in her work increasing her interest in issues of visual perception, and materiality, which led to the creation of her plastic sculptures body of work[7]

Current work[edit]

In 2012, Colón began working with plastics,developing a proprietary fabrication process of blow-molding and layering various acrylic materials. This industrial process creates acrylic sculptures that appear to emanate light and color from within, however the light appearing to emanate from the objects is only an illusion based on color and form. Art Critic Mat Gleason explained: "Rather than have some technological trick embedded into the art, [Colón] has made objects that are altered by the world around them yet never stop being themselves. This artist has thus delivered a meditation on the flexibility of the feminine as antidote to the rigidity of the masculine."[8] Critic Steven Biller has stated that: “Without question, Colon’s approach to shaping, forming, and coloring is advancing the trajectory of the resurgent Light and Space / Finish Fetish movement.”[9]

The Pods shift color before the viewers' eyes depending on lighting, and the viewers’ choice of location.[10]

In her essay “Notes, Thoughts, Observations Towards the Development, Conceptualization and Creation of Non-Specific Objects,” Colón refers to her plastic sculptures "non-specific objects," further explaining, that “Non-Specificity [is] a quality brought about by the inherent mutability of the object.”[11]

Art writer and biographer Hunter Drohojowska Philp describes this phenomena: “When the most recent iterations of the Glo-Pods are mounted on a white wall, the 'inherent mutability,' so desired as an effect by Colón, is indisputable. Depending on the combination of artificial and natural lighting, the colors slip and slide like an oil slick on water. Further alterations are apparent as a viewer approaches the work. Among the many shifts, in a single work, pale aqua can turn to lavender and appear to melt within the form. At close proximity, the focus shifts to the frosty surface, as though one were looking through a white cocoon to the pupa within. At a greater distance, the pupa can seem to vibrate with the growing intensity of its perceived colors. There is no there, there: no singular location in which one can grasp all the implications of a single work.[12]

Museum exhibitions[edit]

2017[edit]

  • PODS, Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, Georgia (March - June 2017) (Solo Exhibition)
  • PODS, Roswell Art Museum, New Mexico (Summer 2017) (Solo Exhibition)

[13]

2016[edit]

  • PODS, Castellani Art Museum, Niagara, New York (September 2016) (Solo Exhibition)
  • PODS, International Museum of Art & Science, McAllen, Texas (April - July 2016) (Solo Exhibition)
  • PODS, Kent State University Art Gallery, Kent, Ohio (January 2016) (Solo Exhibition)

2015[edit]

  • PODS, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio (September 2015) (Solo Exhibition)
  • Artrageous, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California

[14]

2014[edit]

  • COLORIMETRY, Museum of Art & History (MOAH), Lancaster, California
  • TRANS-ANGELES, Kunstmuseum Wilhelm-Morgner Haus, Soest, Germany, April 2014

2013[edit]

  • PODS, Museum of Art & History (MOAH), Lancaster, California (Solo Exhibition)

[15]


Public collections[edit]

  • Museum of Art & History, Lancaster, CA



  1. ^ Gleason, Mat. "Gisela Colon at Ace Gallery: Light & Space Art Gains Content". Huffington Post. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  2. ^ Gleason, Mat. "Gisela Colon at Ace Gallery: Light & Space Art Gains Content". Huffington Post. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  3. ^ Biller, Stephen (May/June 2015). "Gisela Colon: "Pods" at Ace Gallery". Art Ltd: 25. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ Goldstein, Andrew. "Could Silicon Valley Contemporary Be the Next Art Basel?". Art Space. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  5. ^ "Harry S. Truman Foundation". Retrieved 7 April 2015.
  6. ^ Frank, Peter. "Gisela Colon". Art ltd Magazine. artltd. Retrieved 25 March 2015.
  7. ^ Philp, Hunter Drohojowska (April 2015). Gisela Colon. Los Angeles: Ace Gallery. pp. 40, 149, 153, 154. ISBN 978-0-692-41011-0.
  8. ^ Gleason, Mat. "Gisela Colon at Ace Gallery: Light & Space Art Gains Content". Huffington Post. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  9. ^ Biller, Stephen (May/June 2015). "Gisela Colon: "Pods" at Ace Gallery". Art Ltd: 25. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Gleason, Mat. "Gisela Colon at Ace Gallery: Light & Space Art Gains Content". Huffington Post. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  11. ^ Philp, Hunter Drohojowska (April 2015). Gisela Colon (1st ed.). Los Angeles: Ace Gallery. pp. 150, 151. ISBN 978-0-692-41011-0.
  12. ^ Philp, Hunter Drohojowska (April 2015). Gisela Colon (1st ed.). Los Angeles: Ace Gallery. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-692-41011-0.
  13. ^ "Gisela Colon CURRICULUM VITAE". Gisela Colon. Gisela Colon. Retrieved 24 April 2015.
  14. ^ "GISELA COLÓN" (PDF). Ace Gallery. Ace Gallery. Retrieved 24 April 2015.
  15. ^ "Gisela Colon CURRICULUM VITAE". Gisela Colon. Gisela Colon. Retrieved 24 April 2015.

External links[edit]

Official website

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