exhibition
Gelah Penn, Detour

About the exhibition

Kentler International Drawing Space is delighted to present Detour, a site-specific installation by Gelah Penn. The exhibition runs from February 17 to March 25 with a reception on Friday, February 17 from 6 to 9 pm. An exhibition brochure with essay by Sarah Schmerler accompanies the exhibition. In her third solo show, Penn continues to explore the linear language of drawing in three-dimensional space. As curator Elizabeth M. Grady has noted, "Gelah Penn's shimmering installations of knotted monofilament are the very essence of drawing, loosened from its dependence on the wall." The artist elaborates, I use the lexicon of gestural abstraction to articulate landscapes of mark-making in space. My interest is in constructing a kind of substantive ephemerality, an accretion of marks and their shadows delineating maelstroms of visual noise; a luminous sea in suspended animation, with allusions to microscopic activity, arterial systems, knots, dust and weather. The exhibition also includes drawings from Penn's Splink series of large-scale works on paper in graphite and acrylic. Developed in response to issues explored in this and previous installations, these more traditional pieces engender a compelling and energetic dialogue between two different forms of mark-making.

Related event: February 25, 2006 - Gelah Penn Artist's Talk